“Pen­ny for your thoughts,” dear Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Pen­ne­lope Beck­les. When con­front­ed by re­porters in re­la­tion to the mat­ter of ap­point­ed Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates, Beck­les un­der­stand­ably not­ed that she had just re­turned from aboard and need­ed time to avail her­self of all that was in­volved in the mat­ter.

As it has come to be known, Sen­a­tor John-Bates as­sist­ed her fel­low Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­ber, for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, in the prepa­ra­tion of a doc­u­ment to be placed be­fore the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC), the com­mit­tee to which she be­longed.

At an­oth­er lev­el of in­volve­ment, PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is al­so said to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in help­ing Deyals­ingh with the prepa­ra­tion of the doc­u­ments. Al-Rawi, a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al, has re­spond­ed to the charges of mis­con­duct by stat­ing that he did not be­long to the PAAC and that he act­ed as the at­tor­ney for Deyals­ingh.

In the in­stance of PNM leader Beck­les, she has had suf­fi­cient time to con­sult with her at­tor­ney on the mat­ters. Even though a lawyer her­self, Beck­les sought le­gal ad­vice based on the well-known prin­ci­ple that “a lawyer who rep­re­sents him­self has a fool for a client.”

How­ev­er, af­ter six days of con­tem­pla­tive and con­sul­ta­tive thought, the time al­lowed to make a de­ci­sion has elapsed. As an ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian who has tak­en up the man­tle as leader of the old­est and most ex­pe­ri­enced par­ty in gov­ern­ment and pub­lic af­fairs, there­fore, Beck­les must now per­form her du­ties.

In­de­ci­sive­ness is not a char­ac­ter­is­tic Beck­les should dis­play at this time, es­pe­cial­ly if she ex­pects the elec­torate to take her as a se­ri­ous can­di­date for prime min­is­ter­ship, or even as a strong and con­vinc­ing leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

What the de­lay, seem­ing­ly with­out just cause, has al­so done to the PNM is to give the Gov­ern­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and its as­so­ci­at­ed par­ties ad­di­tion­al time to score heavy po­lit­i­cal points against the Op­po­si­tion and to mark it down an­oth­er notch or two.

What Beck­les’ un­ac­cept­able de­lay al­so tells the coun­try is that should she be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come prime min­is­ter, she will not have the ca­pac­i­ty to be proac­tive with de­ci­sions of far greater im­por­tance than this one.

More­so, the re­al­i­ty is that this mat­ter is not ter­ri­bly com­pli­cat­ed: John-Bates is ac­cused of ad­vis­ing her par­ty mem­ber on mat­ters which touched on is­sues which were be­fore the PAAC, of which she was a mem­ber. Al-Rawi’s in­put to the doc­u­ment was sim­i­lar, but un­der dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances.

John-Bates has al­so made it easy for Beck­les by of­fer­ing to re­sign. Now, there may al­so be ex­ten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances which Beck­les and her le­gal ad­vis­ers have dis­cov­ered, but sure­ly the pas­sage of time on the mat­ters in­volved is more than suf­fi­cient for a de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sion.

Beck­les’ in­de­ci­sion al­so ex­tends to the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing Ari­ma May­or Bali­ram Ma­haraj’s dis­play of a lack of loy­al­ty to his of­fice and the PNM in his de­ci­sion to at­tend a UNC func­tion on the very night of one put on by his may­oral of­fice.

Need­less to say, Trinidad and To­ba­go is a live­ly po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty which needs qual­i­ty and de­ci­sive ac­tion from its lead­ers and those eye­ing high of­fice.