The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s claim that the ad­di­tion­al fines and fees set to take ef­fect in the new year were ful­ly out­lined in the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and the Fi­nance Bill.

On Mon­day, in what ap­peared to be a re­sponse to claims that the con­tentious mea­sures gazetted on Christ­mas Day were in­tro­duced with­out warn­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia that they were clear­ly out­lined in ad­vance.

“All these changes were present first in the bud­get and sec­ond in the Fi­nance Bill,” she said. “I don’t think she (Pen­ne­lope Beck­les) ac­tu­al­ly knows what’s go­ing on in par­lia­men­tary or leg­isla­tive mat­ters.”

How­ev­er, the PNM said that was not the case at all.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion Leader me­dia brief­ing, for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said, “I went through the Fi­nance Bill. You should know she (the Prime Min­is­ter) is talk­ing non­sense. Be­cause there are on­ly four or five ad­just­ments to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act fines in the Fi­nance Bill, and very few are men­tioned in the bud­get state­ment or the bud­get de­bate as well.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment failed to prop­er­ly ex­plain to peo­ple the con­se­quences of the tax­es. Fur­ther­more, she said the Prime Min­is­ter should not talk about pay­ing at­ten­tion in the Par­lia­ment when she her­self missed “the whole bud­get de­bate.”

Beck­les said her par­ty is not ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the bud­get de­bate end­ing ear­ly with­out sev­er­al key Cab­i­net min­is­ters con­tribut­ing.

While the PNM has faced some crit­i­cism over the new mea­sures not be­ing an­nounced in Par­lia­ment, Beck­les main­tained it was not the Op­po­si­tion’s fault that the de­bate came to an ear­ly close.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of the se­nior min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment did not say a word. Min­is­ter of Works, noth­ing. Min­is­ter of Health, noth­ing. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, De­fence, noth­ing. And they’re talk­ing about end­ing. They end the de­bate. They are the Gov­ern­ment.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader added, “If you are the Gov­ern­ment, you have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, when you are there in the Par­lia­ment, to say to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, what is the bud­get about? Peo­ple shouldn’t be get­ting all sur­prised about, you know, your light ain’t work­ing. It doesn’t make any sense. It is just pure in­com­pe­tence. And they will not want to throw it on the shoul­ders of the Op­po­si­tion to tell us, we should be aware.”

The de­bate, which usu­al­ly lasts sev­er­al days to al­low all 41 Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to speak, end­ed abrupt­ly at 2.22 am on Oc­to­ber 18, af­ter on­ly one full day of con­tri­bu­tions.

Both the PNM and UNC blamed each oth­er for the “col­lapse.”

But Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the bud­get de­bate was not shut down in the Low­er House.

“Beck­les-Robin­son left the op­po­si­tion bench in the house cham­ber to go for dou­bles in the tea room dur­ing the bud­get de­bate. Her bench was left with­out guid­ance while she was feast­ing on dou­bles with slight pep­per, cu­cum­ber, no sweet sauce in the tea room, so none of the PNM MPs stood to con­tribute. There­fore, the de­bate was wound up.”

And while the PNM, dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing said the coun­try is not bet­ter off since the UNC as­sumed of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Mur­ders are down by about 240, se­ri­ous crimes are down, ten per cent for PSA work­ers, re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion blue­print launched, se­cured our bor­ders with the help of the US, end­ed gang fi­nanc­ing through CEPEP and URP, de­liv­ered stand-your-round, home in­va­sion, fire­works laws, re­pairs on schools and lap­tops for chil­dren. I know peo­ple are bet­ter off.”

She added, “We have made progress, peo­ple are safer, and we have be­gun set­ting the foun­da­tions for eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion. There is al­ways room for im­prove­ment, and we will work hard­er next year.”

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused the PNM of squan­der­ing the mon­ey that was al­lo­cat­ed to their re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Ear­li­er in the Op­po­si­tion’s me­dia brief­ing, Beck­les ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of vin­dic­tive­ly slash­ing bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies con­trolled by the PNM.

“PNM cor­po­ra­tions got the high­est mon­e­tary al­lo­ca­tions, more than the UNC cor­po­ra­tions. They used the mon­ey for fete­ing, fire­works, buy­ing rum for par­ties and pa­rades in­stead of pick­ing up garbage and main­tain­ing the phys­i­cal space. The PNM cor­po­ra­tions are op­er­at­ed with a fete cul­ture. They find mon­ey for weeks of fetes and par­ties, but can’t find any to keep their sup­port­ers’ spaces clean. In­stead of win­ing and drink­ing in the streets, they should try clean­ing them up,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

—Akash Sama­roo