Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath has fired back at Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les, dis­miss­ing al­le­ga­tions that the Gov­ern­ment is fail­ing to ac­count to the pop­u­la­tion as “noth­ing short of a de­flec­tion.”

Padarath’s re­sponse comes af­ter Gon­za­les, in a Face­book post, claimed that the Op­po­si­tion had been blocked from hold­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ac­count af­ter five of sev­en ques­tions sub­mit­ted for Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tion time were dis­al­lowed in Par­lia­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Padarath ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of hypocrisy and cow­ardice, in­sist­ing that their crit­i­cism was an at­tempt to dis­tract from in­ter­nal con­tro­ver­sies.

“The Op­po­si­tion have demon­strat­ed to the pop­u­la­tion that they are hyp­ocrites and cow­ards. This is­sue raised by the Chief Whip is noth­ing short of a de­flec­tion, a de­flec­tion of the re­al is­sues about their deaf­en­ing si­lence,” Padarath said.

He ar­gued that the Op­po­si­tion should in­stead be ad­dress­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing two of its own mem­bers.

“How can one lead a coun­try if you can­not sim­ply lead your par­ty in­to do­ing the right thing? By now, both Sen­a­tor Bates and Al-Rawi should have been fired or they should have re­signed,” he said.

Padarath al­so crit­i­cised Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son for what he de­scribed as in­ac­tion.

“The deaf­en­ing si­lence of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on these mat­ters is what we need to hear about in terms of up­hold­ing our par­lia­men­tary strength and our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy,” he said.

He fur­ther de­fend­ed the au­thor­i­ty of Speak­er of the House Jagdeo Singh to de­ter­mine which ques­tions are per­mis­si­ble for de­bate.

“The Speak­er, in his wis­dom, ob­vi­ous­ly will de­ter­mine whether or not these mat­ters are al­ready ad­dressed in the pub­lic space in de­ter­min­ing which ques­tions are al­lowed. A lot of it is some­times repet­i­tive, and there­fore I trust in the wis­dom of the Speak­er to de­ter­mine which ones are per­mis­si­ble,” Padarath said.

He main­tained that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and con­tin­ues to ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in the par­lia­men­tary process.

“The Gov­ern­ment is ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in an­swer­ing these ques­tions in the best way pos­si­ble,” he added.

Yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les claimed that the Op­po­si­tion had sought an­swers on a range of is­sues, in­clud­ing dry sea­son mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts in To­ba­go, crime un­der the on­go­ing state of emer­gency, po­ten­tial job loss­es linked to the pend­ing sale of Nu­trien op­er­a­tions and the ap­point­ment process for the in­ter­im CEO of SportTT.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that ques­tion was not ap­proved, so the op­po­si­tion was un­able to ask the Prime Min­is­ter this very im­por­tant ques­tion.”