Akash Sama­roo

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to cre­ate a false nar­ra­tive about a “crashed econ­o­my” to put the pop­u­la­tion on ear­ly no­tice that it will not be de­liv­er­ing on its am­bi­tious elec­tion promis­es.

Speak­ing late on Wednes­day evening dur­ing the de­bate on the mo­tion to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, Beck­les said the con­tri­bu­tions by Gov­ern­ment mem­bers be­fore her re­mind­ed her of the lo­cal say­ing “tak­ing in front.”

“And what this Gov­ern­ment is do­ing is tak­ing in front. Be­cause they know very well that hav­ing closed down and re­peal­ing the TTRA (Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty) and every sin­gle mem­ber that has spo­ken here to­day, I heard the mem­ber of San Juan/Barataria say­ing that I be­ing a min­is­ter of plan­ning and not hav­ing any plans, this Gov­ern­ment has pre­sent­ed ab­solute­ly no plans,” Beck­les claimed.

She added, “And they want to take in front be­cause they know very well that when they crash the econ­o­my, when they cause the de­val­u­a­tion in our dol­lar that they will then want to say it is be­cause of the poli­cies of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

Beck­les said it was “mind-bog­gling” that one of the Gov­ern­ment’s first ini­tia­tives was to re­peal the TTRA.

“These will have con­se­quences, and we await pa­tient­ly be­cause we know what those con­se­quences will be.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader lament­ed that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter did not ex­plain how his gov­ern­ment would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth but in­stead spent most of his time ped­dling a sto­ry about a crashed econ­o­my which she de­scribed as “mis­lead­ing and to say the least, in­sen­si­tive and cal­cu­lat­ed to cause mis­chief.”

It was at this time her brief bat­tle with the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness be­gan.

Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath rose to his feet to com­plain to the House Speak­er that, “the mem­ber is a sea­soned and ex­pe­ri­enced mem­ber and is read­ing a pre­pared text from her han­dlers this evening. One would think if you are lead­ing then you will lead from the front.”

How­ev­er, Speak­er Jagdeo Singh over­ruled Padarath, say­ing that giv­en the para­mount need for ac­cu­ra­cy in a bud­get de­bate, he would al­low some read­ing.

Beck­les soon af­ter told Padarath that she would read if she had to and re­mind­ed him that he was not the House Speak­er.

This would not be the end of their tense ex­change.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader would go on to say that the Gov­ern­ment wast­ed the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak of plans to gen­er­ate rev­enue and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“They have in­stead de­cid­ed to utilise this de­bate to fo­cus ex­clu­sive­ly on the al­leged crash­ing of the econ­o­my by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment be­cause to date they have not pre­sent­ed an io­ta of ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate that.”

Beck­les warned, “Their hon­ey­moon is over.”

She ad­vised the Fi­nance Min­is­ter that in­stead of com­plain­ing about the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties which she said were due to ex­ter­nal fac­tors, the new gov­ern­ment should in­stead face it head-on and stop mak­ing ex­cus­es.

“The faster this Gov­ern­ment ac­cepts the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty of the coun­try the bet­ter it will be for them.”

How­ev­er, be­fore she con­clud­ed, the Op­po­si­tion Leader faced Padarath and said, “And I want to sug­gest to the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South who some­how has con­vinced him­self that he is the re­al Prime Min­is­ter.”

That seemed to have touched a nerve on the Gov­ern­ment bench.

A lot was said off-mic, how­ev­er, Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin shout­ed, “Siparia took every at­tack, she led from the front.”