KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les-Robin­son mis­be­haved twice in Par­lia­ment last week, lead­ing to what he de­scribed as the col­lapse of the Op­po­si­tion’s re­sponse to the 2026 Bud­get de­bate.

Beck­les-Robin­son, who made her first Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion as Op­po­si­tion Leader and the first fe­male po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, was re­ferred to Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee fol­low­ing her re­marks dur­ing the de­bate.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions in Av­o­cat, Fyz­abad, on Sat­ur­day night, Tan­coo ac­cused Beck­les-Robin­son of ma­nip­u­lat­ing fig­ures and mis­lead­ing the pub­lic. He al­so said her crit­i­cism of House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh raised con­cerns about breach­es of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure un­der Er­sk­ine May.

“A per­son­al at­tack on the Speak­er is for­bid­den by the rules of Par­lia­ment,” Tan­coo said. “As a re­sult, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was sent to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, which will re­view the cir­cum­stances and take the nec­es­sary ac­tion.”

Tan­coo claimed Beck­les-Robin­son’s be­hav­iour ex­tend­ed in­to her Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, which he said was “filled with mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

“She ma­nip­u­lat­ed fig­ures and pre­sent­ed them to the pub­lic as facts,” he said. “Af­ter all of that, the Op­po­si­tion col­lapsed—they were not even able to de­fend the po­si­tion of their leader.”

He added that when Beck­les-Robin­son left the cham­ber for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od, her MPs “ap­peared lost with­out lead­er­ship.”

“They came un­pre­pared, un­re­searched and un­script­ed,” he said. “All I could say in my wrap-up was that they had no choice but to ad­mit this was a very good bud­get—peo­ple-cen­tred, bal­anced and fis­cal­ly re­spon­si­ble.”

At the PNM’s post-bud­get meet­ing in Bel­mont on Fri­day, Beck­les-Robin­son ac­knowl­edged she must be cau­tious af­ter be­ing re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee but vowed not to be si­lenced.

“Fear not—no­body will muz­zle your po­lit­i­cal leader,” she said. “This is pan­ic and des­per­a­tion. They are look­ing for more things, but we have to be care­ful. We are not giv­ing them any ex­cuse, and they will not muz­zle the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

Tan­coo, how­ev­er, said MPs have a du­ty to serve their con­stituents and the na­tion “with­out fear, favour or ill will,” and he was dis­ap­point­ed by what he called the Op­po­si­tion’s fail­ure to prop­er­ly re­search their ar­gu­ments.

“The Op­po­si­tion un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the in­tel­li­gence of cit­i­zens,” he said.

“Peo­ple are in­formed. They fol­low so­cial me­dia, they do their re­search, and they see the mis­in­for­ma­tion for what it is.”

He cit­ed con­fu­sion over the dif­fer­ence be­tween prop­er­ty tax and the land­lord busi­ness sur­charge as an ex­am­ple of “the mis­chief” be­ing spread by the Op­po­si­tion.

“It can­not be the same thing, but that’s the mis­in­for­ma­tion ped­dled by the Op­po­si­tion, start­ing with their leader,” Tan­coo said.

The Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee be­gins its de­lib­er­a­tions on Tues­day and is ex­pect­ed to con­clude by Sat­ur­day.

Tan­coo said he re­mains con­fi­dent that cit­i­zens un­der­stand the Gov­ern­ment’s bud­get aims—“to cre­ate space for eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, growth, and de­vel­op­ment”—and thanked the pub­lic for their con­tin­ued con­fi­dence and sup­port.