Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les dou­bled down on her crit­i­cism of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks at the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis yes­ter­day, call­ing the ad­dress “em­bar­rass­ing”. She lament­ed that it cast Trinidad and To­ba­go in a neg­a­tive light.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day in Port-of-Spain, Beck­les said she, like many na­tion­als, had an­tic­i­pat­ed a uni­fy­ing and for­ward-look­ing mes­sage from the Prime Min­is­ter at the re­gion­al sum­mit.

In­stead, she said, what un­fold­ed was far from that.

“I re­al­ly could not be­lieve that.  I am sure every Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian was look­ing for­ward to a state­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter that would demon­strate some io­ta, as it re­lates to uni­ty.  We have dis­cussed it over and over,” Beck­les said, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of Cari­com trade links and co­op­er­a­tion.

Beck­les said she could not be­lieve that the Prime Min­is­ter used such a piv­otal re­gion­al plat­form to de­fend her un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and to sharply re­buke Cari­com mem­ber states for what she char­ac­terised as po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and a fail­ure to con­front Venezuela, crit­i­cisms Beck­les said were mis­placed.

In a Face­book state­ment short­ly af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter’s ad­dress on Tues­day, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks were “in­flam­ma­to­ry, reck­less, and whol­ly un­be­com­ing of the high of­fice she oc­cu­pies,” and made it clear that the Op­po­si­tion was dis­tanc­ing it­self “en­tire­ly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly” from what she de­scribed as dis­grace­ful ut­ter­ances.

Beck­les was crit­i­cal of the Prime Min­is­ter’s claim that the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sist­ed in the kid­nap­ping of a T&T cit­i­zen in Bar­ba­dos in Oc­to­ber 2022.

“That al­le­ga­tion is out­ra­geous,” Beck­les stat­ed, call­ing it a “dan­ger­ous fab­ri­ca­tion” that ma­ligns not on­ly for­mer gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in T&T but al­so au­thor­i­ties in Bar­ba­dos.

She al­so crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as an at­tack on the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of ridi­cul­ing the re­gion­al body in a “dis­dain­ful man­ner.”

She went fur­ther, as­sert­ing that for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, “on his worst day in of­fice, would have rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try far bet­ter.”