Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles has crit­i­cised the PNM Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to pass cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion. He al­so said PNM can­di­dates are shelling out mon­ey “like a drunk­en sailor” - a claim PNM PRO Faris Al Rawi la­belled “delu­sion­al”.

At yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing, Charles said: “To­day crime is at an all-time high. Our mur­der rate seems head­ed for a record-break­ing 700 by the end of 2023. Car thefts, home in­va­sions, miss­ing per­sons, tru­an­cy in schools, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny . . . Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher gave the coun­try un­til June to wit­ness a re­duc­tion in the mur­der rate. June is up­on us and we’re yet to see this as­pi­ra­tional re­duc­tion. She’s fall­en short and cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ue to pay for it,” he said

“And nei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter nor any of the heads of our pro­tec­tive ser­vices have a plan to as­sure that things will be bet­ter.”’

Charles list­ed ar­eas where he said the PNM had failed that need im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion: “Fail­ure to pass cam­paign fi­nance re­form law. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion is on our doorstep and po­lit­i­cal in­vestors are lick­ing their chops. I’m re­li­ably in­formed that PNM can­di­dates are shelling out mon­ey like a drunk­en sailor,”

PNM PRO Faris Al Rawi was asked whether there have been re­ports. He claimed Charles was “delu­sion­al” and the Cam­paign Fi­nance Re­form Bill was sent to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee

“I urge him to fo­cus on his own cam­paign. PNM will con­duct this elec­tion with­in the con­fines of the law,” Al Raw said.

Charles was al­so crit­i­cal of the fail­ure to in­te­grate Span­ish-speak­ing per­sons.

“De­pend­ing on whom one re­lies on there may be be­tween 30 to 70,000 Venezue­lan res­i­dents here. My in­for­ma­tion is that one in four ba­bies born in Trinidad and To­ba­go has a Latin her­itage. Is our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem be­ing re­tooled to de­liv­er a bilin­gual ed­u­ca­tion?” he asked.

“If left to their own de­vices they’ll op­er­ate on the fringes of so­ci­ety. In 10 to 15 years a fu­ture prime min­is­ter will ask why young men of Latin ori­gin are in­volved in crime. Just as the shift sys­tem de­stroyed us decades ago, so will we reap the whirl­wind of ig­nor­ing the ed­u­ca­tion­al needs of our Venezue­lan guests.”