Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ques­tioned the ab­sence of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar from a press con­fer­ence held to­day, say­ing the pub­lic rea­son­ably ex­pect­ed the Prime Min­is­ter to ap­pear and ad­dress mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance.

In a state­ment post­ed to so­cial me­dia, Beck­les said the me­dia and pub­lic in­stead faced two Min­is­ters who ap­peared un­able to pro­vide clear an­swers on key na­tion­al is­sues.Beck­les said Trinidad and To­ba­go “can­not be ex­pect­ed to ac­cept a Prime Min­is­ter who seems un­will­ing to make her­self avail­able to the me­dia and, more im­por­tant­ly, to the peo­ple she was elect­ed to serve.”

She crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as a poor­ly ex­e­cut­ed press con­fer­ence by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which she said ap­peared de­signed to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion with “friv­o­lous and cheap po­lit­i­cal rhetoric” on is­sues re­lat­ing to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, rather than ad­dress­ing se­ri­ous na­tion­al con­cerns.