Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar is ask­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to "stop be­ing bit­ter, in­sult­ing and hate­ful to any­one who has a dif­fer­ing opin­ion, view or idea from his own." She was re­spond­ing to com­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter at a fo­rum last night. 

Ac­cord­ing to the Op­po­si­tion Leader "his be­hav­iour ex­hib­it­ed at the PNM pub­lic meet­ing was be­neath the dig­ni­ty of the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter."

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Op­po­si­tion Leader:

On Mon­day 26th Sep­tem­ber 2022, the gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed a bud­get which was a most evil at­tack on the poor and work­ing class. 

Not con­tent with this act of evil per­pe­trat­ed on the pop­u­la­tion on Mon­day, Kei­th Row­ley last night chose to spew bit­ter­ness, hate and be­have like a man to­tal­ly out of con­trol.  

Af­ter two hours of un­for­tu­nate in­sults di­rect­ed at my­self and oth­er cit­i­zens, the facts re­main that this is a man who:  

  was out­smart­ed in gas price ne­go­ti­a­tions in Hous­ton lead­ing to cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences to our en­er­gy rev­enues. 

  Closed down the Petrotrin re­fin­ery lead­ing the coun­try to pay ex­or­bi­tant fu­el prices at the pump and los­ing the main forex earn­er. 

  Crashed the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate due to in­ter­fer­ence in gas price ne­go­ti­a­tions 

  Presided over the clo­sure of AL­NG train one and wast­ed 250 mil­lion dol­lars in the process 

  Presided over failed bid rounds for oil and gas ex­plo­ration. 

  Crashed our GDP by 19.4% or 37.5 bil­lion dol­lars. 

  Over­saw the loss of over one hun­dred thou­sand jobs 

I ask Kei­th Row­ley to stop be­ing bit­ter, in­sult­ing and hate­ful to any­one who has a dif­fer­ing opin­ion, view or idea from his own. Last night he ap­peared com­plete­ly blind­ed to the re­al­i­ty of the suf­fer­ing of the poor and work­ing class. 

His be­hav­iour ex­hib­it­ed at the PNM pub­lic meet­ing was be­neath the dig­ni­ty of the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. 

I un­der­stand that he may be un­hap­py with him­self and is just tak­ing it out on my­self and oth­ers, so, I hold no per­son­al an­i­mos­i­ty to­ward him. How­ev­er, he is no or­di­nary cit­i­zen and the re­sults of his be­hav­iour are hav­ing de­struc­tive ef­fects on the liveli­hoods of many cit­i­zens. 

I urge Row­ley and his gov­ern­ment to be bet­ter, in­stead of bit­ter to­wards the poor and work­ing class. I ad­vise that he does some in­tro­spec­tion and maybe he will ex­pe­ri­ence some growth and ma­tu­ri­ty and thus re­lin­quish this un­nec­es­sary bit­ter­ness. 

Fi­nal­ly, I call on all mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er this evil bud­get and with­draw it now!