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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Couva South MP accuses President of ‘double standard’ after UK interview

by

Gail Alexander
1022 days ago
20220920
UNC Member of Parliament, Couva South, Rudranath Indarsingh.

UNC Member of Parliament, Couva South, Rudranath Indarsingh.

ANISTO ALVES

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rudy In­dars­ingh has crit­i­cised Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes for grant­i­ng an in­ter­view to the UK’s Sky News on the late Queen Eliz­a­beth II’s pass­ing while Weekes “re­fused to ut­ter a word to lo­cal me­dia for weeks” af­ter the 2021 Mer­it List for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was re­moved un­der her watch.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, In­dars­ingh said the Pres­i­dent’s en­thu­si­asm to at­tend the late Queen’s fu­ner­al and the in­ter­view to the British me­dia showed her dou­ble stan­dard on var­i­ous counts.

“While Paula-Mae Weekes flies abroad, she should pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the cri­sis in her own coun­try, since we nev­er see nor hear from her at those crit­i­cal times, if at all.

“I looked on in be­wil­der­ment as Pres­i­dent Weekes con­duct­ed an in­ter­view with Sky News ahead of the (Queen’s) fu­ner­al,” he said.

The Cou­va South MP added, “The death of Her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth II is a mon­u­men­tal loss to the Unit­ed King­dom and the world, and I’m in full agree­ment with the idea our coun­try should have been rep­re­sent­ed. What I’m not in agree­ment with is the fact that Pres­i­dent Weekes could bare­ly be found any­where in T&T but she should jet-set to Lon­don to be in the pres­ence of world lead­ers.

“I looked on in dis­be­lief as the Pres­i­dent gave Sky News an in­ter­view but re­fused to ut­ter a word to lo­cal jour­nal­ists for weeks af­ter the Mer­it List for the post of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was sur­rep­ti­tious­ly re­moved from her Of­fice un­der her watch.

“The Pres­i­dent didn’t ut­ter a word of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, re­gret or re­buke, and she hid from sight be­hind the cur­tains at Pres­i­dent’s House from our lo­cal me­dia,” In­dars­ingh said.

In­dars­ingh al­so knocked the Pres­i­dent for not vis­it­ing the fam­i­lies of the four divers killed in the Paria pipeline tragedy and the rel­a­tives of crime vic­tims.

While he not­ed that Pres­i­dent Weekes said she may shed a tear for the Queen, In­dars­ingh ad­vised her to show “em­pa­thy” to peo­ple in T&T “be­fore trav­el­ling to Lon­don to shed an un­doubt­ed­ly croc­o­dile tear.”


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