Lopinot/Bon Air West MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les tore in­to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der in To­ba­go on Tues­day night, say­ing T&T de­serves bet­ter than a min­is­ter who can­not read his own speech in Par­lia­ment.

Gon­za­les, who is vy­ing for the chair­man po­si­tion in the par­ty, told To­ba­go sup­port­ers that the coun­try's first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams did not die for "this kind of em­bar­rass­ment" call­ing on Alexan­der to “stop em­bar­rass­ing us.”

At the One PNM slate's po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Buc­coo, ahead of the PNM's in­ter­nal elec­tions this Sun­day, Gon­za­les wad­ed the Gov­ern­ment.

He went straight for the min­is­ter’s per­for­mance in Par­lia­ment.

“Look at who is your min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Can't read,” Gon­za­les charged.

He said when Alexan­der strug­gled to de­liv­er his ad­dress in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day with­out stum­bling or awk­ward paus­es, it was hard for many to lis­ten to. Gon­za­les said he was flood­ed with mes­sages dur­ing and af­ter the con­tri­bu­tion.

“Some­body mes­saged me in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, and they say like every word has a full stop af­ter it. You can­not even read a pre­pared text for you. Oh God, well get up ear­ly in the morn­ing and read it over and over and over and over again. Stop em­bar­rass­ing us.”

Sup­port­ers at the meet­ing ap­plaud­ed and some shout­ed “shame” as Gon­za­les went on to say what hap­pened in Par­lia­ment this week was more than just a mis­take. He called it a na­tion­al dis­grace. He said that in his eyes, this was not the stan­dard set by the coun­try’s found­ing lead­ers.

“Dr Er­ic Williams did not die for that. (For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter) Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly didn’t go in­to po­lit­i­cal bat­tle for that. PNM ed­u­ca­tion where we put and in­vest­ed bil­lions of dol­lars to pro­duce some­one like Roger Alexan­der?”

Gon­za­les said that hold­ing high of­fice means be­ing ready, be­ing pre­pared, and re­spect­ing the peo­ple. He told the au­di­ence that the job of a min­is­ter—es­pe­cial­ly of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty—is too im­por­tant for blun­ders in Par­lia­ment.

He said min­is­ters and MPs should nev­er walk in­to Par­lia­ment un­pre­pared. Gon­za­les said the fail­ure to de­liv­er a ba­sic speech in front of the na­tion was a sign of dis­re­spect, not on­ly to the pub­lic but to the Par­lia­ment it­self. 

He re­peat­ed that the coun­try ex­pects and de­serves bet­ter.

He said in his view, those who can­not do this are let­ting down the coun­try and the lega­cy of those who came be­fore.