Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to break her si­lence and name the two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors she claims at­tempt­ed to so­lic­it bribes in ex­change for sup­port­ing the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­leged that the two in­de­pen­dents ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor seek­ing per­son­al favours to se­cure their sup­port for the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment) Bill, 2026.

She said the re­quests were re­ject­ed and from that point, it was clear the bill, which re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate, would fail.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter has so far de­clined to iden­ti­fy the sen­a­tors in­volved or pro­vide ev­i­dence to sup­port her claims.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­fusal to re­veal who the sen­a­tors were was reck­less and dam­ag­ing, ar­gu­ing that the al­le­ga­tions amount to crim­i­nal con­duct.

“I mean, the fact is that it’s a con­sis­tent pat­tern of hers, a con­sis­tent pat­tern of threat­en­ing peo­ple, a con­sis­tent pat­tern of bul­ly­ing peo­ple, a con­sis­tent pat­tern of mak­ing in­di­vid­u­als feel that if you don’t go in the di­rec­tion of the Gov­ern­ment, some­thing is wrong with you,” Beck­les said.

She de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments as “ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous,” adding that they cast a shad­ow over the in­tegri­ty of the en­tire par­lia­men­tary sys­tem.

“I think it is ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous that you, as a Prime Min­is­ter, will make those se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions which amount to crim­i­nal con­duct and just leave it for the pub­lic to be­lieve,” Beck­les said.

“It casts as­per­sions on every­thing, on Par­lia­ment, on us as politi­cians, and on In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors.”

Beck­les al­so ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of avoid­ing pub­lic scruti­ny, not­ing that while the Prime Min­is­ter has made al­le­ga­tions pub­licly, she has not made her­self avail­able to an­swer ques­tions from the me­dia.

“You can­not be hid­ing and mak­ing these kinds of al­le­ga­tions,” Beck­les said.

“If I, as leader of the Op­po­si­tion, have a state­ment to make, I should make my­self avail­able to the pub­lic and to the press so they can ques­tion me di­rect­ly. Where did you get that in­for­ma­tion from?”

She warned that such un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims fur­ther erode pub­lic trust, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a coun­try al­ready grap­pling with low de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion rates.

“When a Prime Min­is­ter can pub­licly say that she is aware of this kind of con­duct and then do noth­ing, it sends a mes­sage that peo­ple are free to call any­one any­thing,” Beck­les said, ref­er­enc­ing pre­vi­ous claims made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar about al­leged crim­i­nal fi­nanc­ing of the PNM.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath de­flect­ed calls for the Prime Min­is­ter to iden­ti­fy the sen­a­tors, sug­gest­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lay else­where.

“Those ques­tions should be posed to the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors,” Padarath told Guardian Me­dia.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, a few years ago, one of the cur­rent sen­a­tors on the Pres­i­dent’s bench made some alarm­ing rev­e­la­tions when he in­di­cat­ed that two Court of Ap­peal judges were in­volved in di­a­logue with him with re­spect to the be­hav­iour and con­duct of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. Up to to­day, no one has ever called on that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, who still sits on the Pres­i­dent’s bench in the Par­lia­ment, to re­veal.”

Padarath added that “the onus is on the con­science of those Pres­i­dent’s se­lec­tions in terms of how they con­duct our na­tion’s af­fairs.”