Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of hid­ing from the me­dia as he at­tempts to evade se­ri­ous ques­tions re­lat­ing to the gov­er­nance of this coun­try.

In a re­lease Sat­ur­day, she ex­pressed con­cerns over me­dia re­ports that T&T had been warned by the US au­thor­i­ties that they could face sanc­tions if they moved to of­fer any as­sis­tance to five Iran­ian fu­el tankers that were en route to Venezuela.

She said if claims re­lat­ing to es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween the US, Venezuela and Iran were in­deed true, Row­ley "needs to tell the pop­u­la­tion ex­act­ly what are the po­ten­tial con­se­quences for T&T since we are vir­tu­al­ly caught in the mid­dle of this po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous ship­ment."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed Row­ley "had ap­par­ent­ly gone in­to hid­ing" fol­low­ing the re­fusal to host the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing last Thurs­day or to ac­count dur­ing Fri­day's Par­lia­men­tary ses­sion.

Mean­while, re­porters hop­ing to ques­tion the prime min­is­ter dur­ing the promised me­dia brief­ing Sat­ur­day were told by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials that noth­ing had been planned.

This, one week af­ter Row­ley an­nounced of­fi­cials would re­port to the na­tion three times per week as it re­lat­ed to the lo­cal han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Dur­ing last week Sat­ur­day's me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, the prime min­is­ter said, "As we com­mu­ni­cate with you on a dai­ly a ba­sis, giv­en the num­bers we have been hav­ing and want­i­ng to give some re­lief to the staff that have been work­ing 20 hours or more per day, we would re­port to you now...not on a dai­ly ba­sis, but a lit­tle less fre­quent­ly. We made a sched­ule out Mon­day, Wednes­day and Sat­ur­day and we will come to you im­me­di­ate­ly if the cir­cum­stances change and war­rant your im­me­di­ate no­ti­fi­ca­tion so no news would be good news and we will un­der­take to re­port on Mon­day, on Wednes­day and Sat­ur­day go­ing for­ward."

Even though Row­ley host­ed two con­sec­u­tive me­dia brief­in­gs on May 9 and May 16 re­spec­tive­ly–at which Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and oth­er health of­fi­cials were present–of­fi­cials at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) said no such brief­ing had been planned or can­celled by them Sat­ur­day.

One of­fi­cial said, "You can­not can­cel what was nev­er on."

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said, "There is no can­cel­la­tion. A me­dia con­fer­ence was not sched­uled for to­day."

Du­mas: It's pure spec­u­la­tion

The for­mer head of the pub­lic ser­vice, Regi­nald Du­mas said it was "pure spec­u­la­tion" as to whether Row­ley had in­deed gone silent and was dodg­ing the me­dia.

He said while there may be is­sues Row­ley do not wish to speak on just yet, the ques­tions sur­round­ing trans­paren­cy and democ­ra­cy still lin­gered.

Du­mas said cer­tain mat­ters such as the ten­sions be­tween T&T and the US, and their sub­se­quent meet­ing on Fri­day, "had be­come too pub­lic."

"These are mat­ters that should be dis­cussed qui­et­ly."

Con­cern­ing this mat­ter, he ad­vised, "There should be a low­er­ing of the noise."

Ra­goonath: Row­ley con­tin­u­ing the trend on re­fus­ing to an­swer

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Bish­nu Ra­goonath said, "The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ways had a per­spec­tive that if I have tak­en a de­ci­sion, I am not go­ing to ex­plain my­self or bow to any ex­ter­nal pres­sures."

He said Row­ley's be­hav­iour and re­fusal to an­swer on cer­tain is­sues was him sim­ply, "con­tin­u­ing in that trend."

La Guerre: There might be in­fo still out­stand­ing

Prof John La Guerre said al­though peo­ple had a right to be sus­pi­cious over the al­leged si­lence, they had to al­so un­der­stand there might be in­for­ma­tion still out­stand­ing as it re­lat­ed to the is­sues at hand.

James: PM must make him­self avail­able

Win­ford James said, "We must al­ways won­der what is it that lies be­hind the ac­tions on the part of the di­rec­torate.

"We need to have the Prime Min­is­ter,, who is the na­tion's top ex­ec­u­tive, to make him­self avail­able as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble. He is the top pub­lic per­sona in T&T so we need to know."