The PLP launched an attack on a young Opposition candidate following a press conference she participated in last week.Political newcomer Nandi Davis, 25, hit out at the PLP during the press conference over its “head in the sand” approach to national debt.She also rued the closure of the Sunshine League children’s home and cutbacks to the Mirrors youth programme, which she attributed to poor fiscal management.Minister of Youth Affairs and Families Glenn Blakeney yesterday accused Ms Davis of getting her “facts wrong” during the November 21 press conference.He also questioned why she was “unable to field simple questions from reporters”.The One Bermuda Alliance described his remarks as “bullying”.Mr Blakeney said in a press release: “I was shocked to watch that press conference and when the first question was asked, she turned back to Bob Richards for help. Then, when the second question was asked, she also looked perplexed and Bob said, ‘I don’t want to take over these press conferences.’”“Even in her prepared remarks, Ms Davis got it wrong. We’ve expanded our prevention strategy at the Middle School level and the Sunshine League noted that while government funds remained steady, they saw a decrease in support from the private sector. Given this reality, it’s surprising that Ms Davis didn’t address her concerns to major potential private sector donors.“Mirrors just graduated another successful class. It’s telling that the OBA would criticise the PLP for not expanding Mirrors even further when it was the PLP that introduced the programme.”He also described Mirrors as “very strong” and accused her of making a “deliberately false and untrue statement, suggesting that the Sunshine League closed as a result of their reduced Government grant”.According to Mr Blakeney: “The truth is that the Sunshine League Board of Trustees had determined they were closing before they even knew that their grant would be reduced. The primary reason cited was the major difficulty they had with securing private sector funding support and that they did not want to continue operating as a 24-hour residential facility.”The Sunshine League announced last summer that it would be closing its residential foster care home due to the excessively high cost of operating the 24-hour programme. Interim President Zakiya Johnson told The Royal Gazette that cutbacks in the private sector, along with a reduction of the charity’s Government grant, had left the group in a difficult position.Government reduced the 92-year-old charity’s annual grant from $200,000 to $100,000 in the most recent budget. The rest of the home’s estimated $700,000 annual operating costs have been funded by private donations, she said.In May, Mirrors said it was mulling new ways of sustaining its programme following two successive Budget cuts. Funding for the initiative fell from $2.3 million in 2010/11 to $1.3 million in 2012/13.Responding to Mr Blakeney’s statement, One Bermuda Alliance leader Craig Cannonier said: “Mr Blakeney isn’t going to win the election by bullying our young female candidates. That might work in less tolerant societies, but I doubt people here will appreciate it at all.”He added: “Nandi Davis did a great job during that press conference. At the end of a statement that took ten minutes or so to deliver, she had the good sense, when she was unable to answer a question, to turn to an expert instead of trying to dodge or make something up. That’s exactly what she should have done. The question was about the extent of private sector debt, something no one would expect a politician who was not also an economist, like Mr Richards, to know anything about.”He added: “There was nothing wrong with the statement Ms Davis read from. She did not say, as Mr Blakeney would have us believe, that the reduction of Government’s grants directly affected charities so that they closed as a result. However their grants were reduced and they did close. Mr Blakeney cannot deny there was a connection.”In a statement late last night, the PLP responded: “This has nothing to do with gender, this is about performance. We are the party that is led by a woman and has placed several women in leadership and Ministerial positions. Can the OBA say the same about their leadership?”l The video of the press conference in question can be viewed on www.royalgazette.com