The par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege en­joyed by To­ba­go East MP Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin and oth­ers in this coun­try's leg­is­la­tures pro­vides pro­tec­tion from civ­il or crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty for ac­tions or state­ments made in the course of their du­ties there. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as Mrs Al­leyne-Top­pin so shame­ful­ly demon­strat­ed on Wednes­day, it can be fla­grant­ly abused in pur­suit of nar­row, self serv­ing po­lit­i­cal agen­das and ob­jec­tives.

The To­ba­go MP, who has close to five years of par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence un­der her belt, knew ful­ly well that she could on­ly make those vile ut­ter­ances in that hal­lowed cham­ber where she was shield­ed from a defama­tion law­suit. Se­cure in that knowl­edge, she made a con­tri­bu­tion that was not just sim­ply mau­vais langue and gos­sip but a de­lib­er­ate des­e­cra­tion of the mem­o­ry of a long de­ceased woman.

Hop­ing to score po­lit­i­cal points against a fel­low To­bag­on­ian, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Mrs Al­leyne-Top­pin de­scend­ed to the depths of the gut­ter to place in the records of Hansard a sor­did tale of rape and in­flict­ing trau­ma and pain, not on­ly on the Row­ley fam­i­ly and their loved ones, but every sin­gle cit­i­zen of this coun­try who ever been a vic­tim of that deeply de­hu­man­is­ing crime.

This sor­did sit­u­a­tion brings in­to ques­tion the suit­abil­i­ty of the MP, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, to ef­fec­tive­ly ex­e­cute the min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of at­tend­ing to the needs of cit­i­zens strug­gling with so­cial, eco­nom­ic and per­son­al chal­lenges. Un­der her purview are so­cial work­ers who reg­u­lar­ly con­front the ug­li­ness of rape and its suf­fer­ing vic­tims.

Any per­son who has suf­fered that par­tic­u­lar vi­o­la­tion of their bod­ies and minds can at­test to how long and dif­fi­cult the process of heal­ing can be. Those dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects, in­clud­ing se­vere psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress that can go on for months or years, can on­ly be made worse by the ut­ter­ances of a fe­male gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, spo­ken in a place where a high­er lev­el of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty should have been dis­played.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Mrs Al­leyne-Top­pin's PP col­leagues, who sat, lis­tened and said noth­ing, have by their very si­lence en­dorsed her dis­taste­ful com­ments. So did House Speak­er Wade Mark, who is usu­al­ly swift to deal with less of­fen­sive in­frac­tions, but failed to in­ter­vene as the MP as­sas­si­nat­ed the char­ac­ter of the late Mrs Row­ley.The si­lence of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who nev­er hes­i­tates to re­mind the na­tion of the fact that she is a car­ing wife, moth­er and grand­moth­er, is par­tic­u­lar­ly deaf­en­ing.

In the face of the wide­spread pub­lic out­rage at the min­is­ter's re­marks, the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion can­not now re­sort to the usu­al strate­gies of spin doc­tor­ing and dam­age con­trol.Fol­low­ing the prece­dent that they them­selves es­tab­lished just a few days ago when they round­ly con­demned Dr Row­ley for his "cat" com­ments, they must de­plore this lat­est as­sault on the women of this coun­try. Noth­ing less than out­right con­dem­na­tion and a swift, sin­cere apol­o­gy will suf­fice.

In re­cent weeks, some out­ra­geous, de­struc­tive state­ments have been made on the hus­tings. This lat­est in­ci­dent is much worse, not on­ly be­cause of what was said, but be­cause the ut­ter­ances were made in Par­lia­ment, the very place where the high­est stan­dards of de­bate and be­hav­iour should be ob­served.