Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath has fired back at Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les, dis­miss­ing al­le­ga­tions that the Gov­ern­ment is fail­ing to ac­count to the pop­u­la­tion as “noth­ing short of a de­flec­tion.”

Padarath’s re­sponse comes af­ter Gon­za­les, in a Face­book post, claimed that the Op­po­si­tion had been blocked from hold­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ac­count af­ter five of sev­en ques­tions sub­mit­ted for Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tion time were dis­al­lowed in Par­lia­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Padarath ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of hypocrisy and cow­ardice, in­sist­ing that their crit­i­cism was an at­tempt to dis­tract from in­ter­nal con­tro­ver­sies.