Kevon Felmine

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)Women's Arm chair­man Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine says Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley­did the right thing by apol­o­gis­ing for his "cat and dog" com­ment against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Speak­ing at Pow­er­gen's 23rd an­nu­al spe­cial chil­dren's fun day in Pe­nal yes­ter­day, Roop­nar­ine said she felt the com­ment was not on­ly dis­re­spect­ful to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, but to every women in T&T.

"I think he did the right thing by apol­o­gis­ing to every woman of this land. When we made our call as UNC women, we asked for an apol­o­gy not on­ly to the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter but to every woman of this land.

"I per­son­al­ly felt that it was dis­re­spect­ful to every women, those com­ments that he made and there­fore I think he cer­tain­ly did the right thing by apol­o­gis­ing to every woman of the land. I think those com­ments were un­called for and I know many women in­di­cat­ed that they took of­fence to it and cer­tain­ly we ap­pre­ci­ate that apol­o­gy," Roop­nar­ine said.

While re­spond­ing to al­le­ga­tions made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a PNM meet­ing in Brazil on­March 17, Row­ley said, "She could jump high, she could jump low. She could drink this, she could drink­that, she could bark at my dog be­cause I will ig­nore she cat."

His com­ment was crit­i­cised by Roop­nar­ine, politi­cians and sev­er­al women's group, but in­stead of ac­ced­ing­to their re­quests for an apol­o­gy he said the UNC was cre­at­ing a furore as a dis­trac­tion from is­sues of cor­rup­tion.

But atTues­day'scot­tage meet­ing in St Joseph, Row­ley said, "I'm in the ser­vice of the peo­ple of this coun­try and I'm not in the busi­ness of of­fend­ing any­one. So there­fore I have re­gret on that. That wasn't my in­ten­tion of of­fend­ing any­one."

Asked about pub­lic crit­i­cism over in­sult­ing com­ments be­ing made by both the PNM and UNC on the elec­tion cam­paign trail, she said it was im­por­tant the politi­cians set a good ex­am­ple for the youths of T&T. ?She said as par­ties progress to­ward the gen­er­al elec­tions, she hopes that is­sues are brought to the fore­front and chil­dren can see politi­cians as ex­em­plars.

Both Roop­nar­ine and Sports Min­is­ter Brent San­cho walked around the Pow­er­gen Pe­nal Sports Ground and greet­ed dif­fer­ent­ly abled stu­dents from around T&T and Bar­ba­dos. At the fun day, 1,343 stu­dents from 129 schools gath­ered for the event which is spon­sered by Pow­er­gen, but or­gan­ised by its staff.