A 41-year-old man, now at the cen­tre of a fiery pub­lic de­bate and pos­si­ble po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, for his in­volve­ment in a racist plac­ard demon­stra­tion last week, yes­ter­day said he was paid to do so.In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with CNC3 last night, Nor­bert Cu­pid, who ad­mit­ted to be­ing home­less, said he was at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, as peo­ple as­sem­bled for JTUM's protest march last Fri­day when he was ap­proached by a man in a red jer­sey.

He said the man round­ed up some oth­er men and told them all that he had a job for them and would pay them $50 if they agreed to do it. He said the man then took them down tothe wa­ter­front, gave them red T-shirts and plac­ards and told them to march in front of Par­lia­ment.Cu­pid said the group com­plied but while there a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sup­port­er con­front­ed one of them, hit­ting him in the face.

He said af­ter they protest­ed out­side Par­lia­ment, they then joined the JTUM march be­fore dump­ing the plac­ards in a dump­ster near the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Build­ing. The men then went back to Wood­ford Square and col­lect­ed their $50.Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called on the po­lice to charge the group in­volved in the protest with sedi­tion.But Cu­pid said when he heard that and re­alised the po­lice might be look­ing for them, he went to the po­lice and was told they could not deal with him im­me­di­ate­ly.

He made it clear he was not racist but a man who ac­cept­ed an of­fer be­cause he was des­per­ate for some­thing to eat. He still had the red T-shirt he was giv­en to march but said he had no po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence.