Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion ap­peared to de­liv­er a de­lib­er­ate snub to Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts yes­ter­day, re­fus­ing to ask a sin­gle ques­tion about his min­istry’s $486.4 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee stage of the 2027 Bud­get de­bate.

Op­po­si­tion MPs did not chal­lenge or seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion on any line item of ex­pen­di­ture, al­low­ing the min­istry’s es­ti­mates to be ex­am­ined and ap­proved in a mat­ter of min­utes.

Watts de­liv­ered his ini­tial in­tro­duc­tion but was not called up­on to speak again, as the com­mit­tee moved through the min­istry’s ex­pen­di­ture with­out any scruti­ny from Op­po­si­tion mem­bers.

The si­lence was par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing giv­en that MPs had spent hours ques­tion­ing al­lo­ca­tions to the Min­istries of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and So­cial De­vel­op­ment ear­li­er in the pro­ceed­ings.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the de­ci­sion was a de­lib­er­ate snub by Op­po­si­tion MPs fol­low­ing con­tro­ver­sial re­marks Watts made about fe­male par­lia­men­tar­i­ans dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s Bud­get de­bate.

Watts had praised fe­male Gov­ern­ment MPs for their ap­pear­ance and moral val­ues while mak­ing com­ments wide­ly in­ter­pret­ed as in­sin­u­a­tions about the sex­u­al con­duct of women on the Op­po­si­tion bench­es.

His re­marks sparked con­dem­na­tion from the PNM’s Na­tion­al Women’s League and for­mer UNC par­lia­men­tar­i­an Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les sub­se­quent­ly con­demned Watts’ con­duct, ac­cus­ing him of drag­ging par­lia­men­tary de­bate in­to the gut­ter.

She al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cus­ing her of fail­ing to con­demn the re­marks and in­stead wors­en­ing the con­tro­ver­sy.

Beck­les ques­tioned the ex­am­ple be­ing set for young women, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Watts’ re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for youth af­fairs.

How­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion’s de­ci­sion to re­main silent meant that the min­istry’s planned ex­pen­di­ture of near­ly half a bil­lion dol­lars went un­chal­lenged dur­ing Tues­day’s com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings.

This marked an un­usu­al de­par­ture from the de­tailed ques­tion­ing that typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­teris­es the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s ex­am­i­na­tion of min­is­te­r­i­al bud­gets.