DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has crit­i­cised For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers over his fail­ure to re­spond to a se­ries of par­lia­men­tary ques­tions on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The six ques­tions, posed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira, for oral an­swer yes­ter­day, fo­cused on the Gov­ern­ment’s re­port­ed sup­port for the Unit­ed States in its fight against nar­co-ter­ror­ism in­volv­ing Venezuela.

Vieira al­so sought clar­i­ty on the na­ture and scope of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment in any US-led op­er­a­tions and raised ques­tions about re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.

How­ev­er, the ques­tions went unan­swered, with Sobers in­vok­ing Stand­ing Or­der 26(3), which al­lows re­spons­es to be with­held if dis­clo­sure is deemed con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment’s si­lence un­der­mines trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in gov­er­nance.

"This Gov­ern­ment is a pack of cow­ards. That's what they are, a pack of cow­ards! If you have a po­si­tion and you have sat and you have dis­cussed it in the cab­i­net, you have got­ten the ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vice — as­sum­ing that they have got­ten the ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vice and rec­om­men­da­tion — then you must be able to stand firm, you must be able to stand proud and you must be able to say to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go: ‘I have tak­en this po­si­tion based on re­search, based on ad­vice and based on what is im­por­tant for, in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.’ Not what is in your in­ter­est. And you can­not be a cow­ard. And you can­not keep hid­ing. And you can­not be gov­ern­ing by What­sApp, by Tik­Tok and by Face­book.

"Come and make your­self avail­able to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go so you can be ques­tioned like every sin­gle one of us who are here."

Hours af­ter the min­is­ter re­mained silent, Vieira ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment, say­ing the in­vo­ca­tion of "pub­lic in­ter­est" with­out ex­pla­na­tion was "deeply un­sat­is­fac­to­ry."

"Si­lence in these cir­cum­stances is rarely help­ful. Si­lence can mean many things, but it on­ly works un­til it does not. In de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties, le­git­i­ma­cy ul­ti­mate­ly de­pends up­on open­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty."

He said he hopes the gov­ern­ment will re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion and pro­vide greater clar­i­ty to Par­lia­ment and the pub­lic.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the min­is­ter for com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.