Gov­ern­ment’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga has slammed the Op­po­si­tion UNC’s “tac­tic of out­rage pol­i­tics and mis­in­for­ma­tion” - and al­so dis­missed claims made by UNC MP Rod­ney Charles at UNC’s meet­ing on Mon­day.

Charles, among points, had called on au­thor­i­ties to call in Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, get the PNM’s ac­counts and get him to “ex­plain the wealth” on the fund­ing for the mul­ti-mil­lion Bal­isi­er House’s con­struc­tion.

Charles al­leged, “Do we have a sit­u­a­tion where hu­man traf­fick­ing pro­ceeds wit­ting­ly or un­wit­ting­ly end up fund­ing Bal­isi­er House? We de­mand the donors, we have a right to know as it’s our mon­ey Gov­ern­ment will give them con­tracts from... Did Mr X, re­lax­ing with Dr Row­ley on an ex­pen­sive loveseat, buy any (raf­fle) tick­ets (for the con­struc­tion)?”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the claims, De No­bri­ga said of Charles’ state­ments, “Rod­ney Charles is just the lat­est in the ro­ta­tion of the UNC’s bac­cha­nal ro­ta­tion. This tac­tic of mak­ing the most ob­scene al­le­ga­tions think­able is played out.

“Both he and his par­ty are ‘One Trick Ponies’ and as a cit­i­zen, I’m per­son­al­ly fed up and dis­gust­ed with this ap­proach by the Op­po­si­tion.”

He added, “I have no in­ten­tion of re­spond­ing to this al­le­ga­tion in it­self. It is, as is their cus­tom, not based in any fact and on­ly in­tend­ed to be a dis­trac­tion and I refuse to ac­cept their in­vi­ta­tion to be dis­tract­ed by val­i­dat­ing that non­sense, as it serves this coun­try no good.

“What the Gov­ern­ment is fo­cused on is build­ing the coun­try. We’re fo­cused on Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment in line with our Vi­sion 2030 pol­i­cy and will not be dis­tract­ed by the an­tics of the Op­po­si­tion.”

He added, “But I will re­spond to the Op­po­si­tion’s tac­tic of out­rage pol­i­tics, mis­in­for­ma­tion and at­tempts to erode pub­lic trust in the Gov­ern­ment by play­ing on emo­tion­al ar­gu­ments that may res­onate with some of their base. I com­plete­ly and to­tal­ly re­ject it, as it adds noth­ing to the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion. It is un­for­tu­nate that the Op­po­si­tion keeps fail­ing the cit­i­zens by con­tin­u­ing this gos­sip and out­rage po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.”

PM Row­ley had al­so re­spond­ed to the claim dur­ing a PNM meet­ing in Barataria last Thurs­day, in­di­cat­ing that the fund­ing for Bal­isi­er House had come from the par­ty’s fundrais­ing ex­er­cis­es, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple car raf­fles over the years.