OPPOSITION Leader Pennelope Beckles is calling on Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to withdraw the allegation that the People’s National Movement (PNM) is protecting the local drug mafia.

Speaking at an Opposition media conference on Tuesday, Beckles said, “Let me make it abundantly clear that if the prime minister has evidence that the PNM is in any way involved with the drug mafia, then the Prime Minister knows to take it to the police.

“This is a very serious allegation and the prime minister should withdraw that allegation and apologise because the time has come for this use of inflammatory language consistently whenever you’re under pressure, when you are clueless about governance, you want to put the blame on the PNM and that needs to stop.”

On October 24, Persad-Bissessar in a statement said, “It is most concerning that the PNM, a party long suspected of being financed by the local drug mafia, is overtly attempting to undermine efforts to stop drug, arms and human trafficking into our country.”

“The PNM’s main concern is the protection of the illegal profits of their drug mafia financiers. They have no care for the pain and suffering of their own constituents, far less all other citizens who have borne the terror of murder and grotesque violence for years.”

In an immediate response, the People’s National Movement (PNM) had called her statements “entirely baseless, viciously reckless and highly defamatory.”

Beckles also defended her meeting with Venezuelan Ambassador Álvaro Enrique Sánchez Cordero saying her visit was normal and done according to protocol involving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which coincidentally was around the same time Persad-Bissessar was declared a “person of non-grata” by the Venezuelan National Assembly.

On Tuesday, speaking to reporters in Tobago, Persad-Bissessar maintained that the war was against narco, gun and human traffickers and not with Trinidad and Tobago.