Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles and Gov­ern­ment MP Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day ar­gued in Par­lia­ment about their re­spec­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tions of mes­sages sent by vot­ers in Mon­day’s elec­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ver­bal show­down oc­curred dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s no-con­fi­dence de­bate on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, as Charles took aim at Young while Hinds mount­ed a hot de­fence.

Charles yelled and raged so much about Young that he was of­ten left breath­less. He apol­o­gised for bring­ing a mo­tion against for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon since he said Young who re­placed Dil­lion was much worse.

Charles said the Prime Min­is­ter had dis­missed some con­cerns about the ex­emp­tion sys­tem say­ing Gov­ern­ment’s could not be emo­tion­al. Charles said that was why To­bag­o­ni­ans on Mon­day showed how they felt about Gov­ern­ment be­ing “un­car­ing.” He was re­fer­ring to the 6-6 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly vote where the PNM lost four seats to the PDP re­sult­ing in a his­toric dead­lock.

Hinds in re­ply said the Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed Young, and that Young didn’t choose him­self as Min­is­ter, but the Prime Min­is­ter who se­lect­ed his Cab­i­net. Hinds said Young by virtue of his per­for­mance eth­ic, hon­esty, in­tegri­ty and ca­pac­i­ty, was suit­ed for the job.

When it came to elec­tions, Hinds said the PNM had won two re­cent gen­er­al elec­tions and as for “mes­sages” sent by vot­ers, he said the UNC had got­ten that twice, “and the Op­po­si­tion Leader has got­ten those mes­sages about 12 times on the track!”

The Laven­tille West MP al­so chal­lenged Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar to say - as Young did - that she was in no­body’s back pock­et.

“ Not one of them (in the UNC) could say that!” Hinds de­clared.

He said homi­cides had dropped un­der Young, but by con­trast Per­sad- Bisses­sar had hired Jack Warn­er as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty MIn­is­ter when she knew “ he was an “in­ter­na­tion­al scalper and the whole world was look­ing for him.”

Hinds added a probe is prob­a­bly still on re­gard­ing a for­mer UNC Min­is­ter who was found smok­ing mar­i­jua­na in Room 101 with a Span­ish woman.

He said Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s con­cerns about a Venezue­lan pros­ti­tu­tion ring, where na­tion­als were in­volved, would bet­ter be an­swered by peo­ple on her side.

As Charles and Hinds sparred, there were rum­blings on both Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment bench­es which forced Speak­er of the House Bridgid An­nisette - George to in­ter­vene.

The House Speak­er made St Au­gus­tine MP Kadi­jah Ameen apol­o­gise for “ste­ups­ing”, which Ameen cold­ly com­plied.

An­oth­er Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein was chas­tised for un­par­lia­men­tary lan­guage af­ter he asked, “What is the rel­e­vance of this non­sense this man (Hinds) speak­ing?”

While an­oth­er Op­po­si­tion MP was heard telling Hinds to wear his mask above his nose.