Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has knocked Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for writ­ting to Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley on the Brent Thomas fi­as­co.

In a post on the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Face­book page on Thurs­day night, in an ap­par­ent re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that she had called on Mot­t­ley to hold a full en­quiry in­to the mat­ter, PM Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion Leader was out of place to do so.

“The lat­est self-pro­mo­tion of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion as an in­ser­tion in­to the busi­ness of the han­dling of the sen­si­tive Brent Thomas mat­ter be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos and the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is a whol­ly un­nec­es­sary and out of place in­tru­sion by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion,” Row­ley said.

Not­ing that T&T has a du­ly elect­ed Gov­ern­ment which he leads, Row­ley said, “There is a role for the Op­po­si­tion and a role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment in man­ag­ing the af­fairs of the state of T&T.”

He point­ed out that T&T’s in­ter­est “will al­ways be bet­ter served and pro­tect­ed if the coun­try has one gov­ern­ment at a time.”

In a me­dia state­ment in re­sponse to Row­ley yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the PM should stop wor­ry­ing about her let­ter and deal with is­sues af­fect­ing cit­i­zens. She said he should al­so call the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions now.

“The coun­try is over­whelmed by mur­ders, home in­va­sions, rob­beries, un­em­ploy­ment, pover­ty, in­creas­ing food costs and de­clin­ing liv­ing stan­dards. These are the is­sues that the Gov­ern­ment should be con­cen­trat­ing on in­stead of at­tempt­ing to sup­press trans­paren­cy, free­dom of speech, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples and the rule of law,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said a mat­ter in­volv­ing the il­le­gal ab­duc­tion and ter­ror­ism of a cit­i­zen is one of na­tion­al con­cern and strikes at the heart of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the rule of law. It was in that re­gard she said she wrote to Mot­t­ley.

The sit­u­a­tion arose last month af­ter Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad, in a judg­ment, crit­i­cised both lo­cal and Bar­ba­di­an po­lice of­fi­cers over the man­ner in which Thomas was forcibly re­turned to T&T from Bar­ba­dos while in­tran­sit to Mi­a­mi last Oc­to­ber.

He was tak­en from his ho­tel room in Bar­ba­dos and hand­ed over to T&T po­lice of­fi­cers, who re­turned him to Trinidad and To­ba­go aboard a Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) air­craft.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad de­scribed the process an “ab­duc­tion in Bar­ba­dos.”

Bar­ba­dos’ At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Dale Mar­shall has called Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s claim un­for­tu­nate and de­nied that his coun­try’s po­lice force act­ed in any un­to­ward man­ner in the process. Both coun­tries are now con­duct­ing in­quiries in­to what tran­spired in the case.

Al­though both PM Row­ley and Bar­ba­dos PM Mot­t­ley have in­di­cat­ed that they knew noth­ing about what tran­spired in the case be­fore it came out in Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Mot­t­ley to ini­ti­ate an in­quiry in the in­ter­est of the two na­tions in her let­ter.

“The il­le­gal ab­duc­tion of a per­son be­tween our Caribbean is­land states is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter which war­rants ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in both coun­tries. In this re­gard, in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of our two na­tions, I re­spect­ful­ly call up­on you, as Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, to ini­ti­ate a full pub­lic in­quiry in­to this mat­ter,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote.