Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is de­mand­ing clar­i­ty from the gov­ern­ment af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­versed her ac­count of why US mil­i­tary per­son­nel are in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Speak­ing out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, Beck­les ques­tioned why nei­ther To­ba­go’s Chief Sec­re­tary nor the wider pub­lic had been con­sult­ed, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s shift­ing ex­pla­na­tions have fu­elled anx­i­ety rather than eased it.

She point­ed to vis­i­ble ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land and raised con­cerns over whether the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty was ever ap­proached for the manda­to­ry ap­provals and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions. Beck­les com­pared the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to that of Grena­da, where the prime min­is­ter pub­licly in­vit­ed feed­back on sim­i­lar re­quests from US of­fi­cials. She said that lev­el of trans­paren­cy should have been adopt­ed.

Pressed on whether the radar in­stal­la­tion could strain re­la­tions with Venezuela, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter must ad­dress the na­tion di­rect­ly, not­ing that cit­i­zens ap­pear to be learn­ing more about the sit­u­a­tion from for­eign news out­lets and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio than from their own gov­ern­ment.