Kali­fa Clyne

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says racist com­ments on her par­ty's Face­book page were not au­tho­rised, would nev­er be au­tho­rised nor con­doned by her par­ty.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would look in­to the mat­ter and speak to the ad­min­is­tra­tors of the page.

Short­ly af­ter the PNM's vic­to­ry on Mon­day, sup­port­ers from ei­ther side of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide used so­cial me­dia to ex­press their joy or frus­tra­tion at the re­sult.How­ev­er, the posts went from con­grat­u­la­to­ry and sad to ver­bal at­tacks in a short space of time.One Face­book user went so far as to threat­en to kill the new­ly ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and to use mag­ic to harm him.

That same per­son lat­er delet­ed his post and re­placed it with an apol­o­gy and an ex­pla­na­tion that he had ini­tial­ly been in­censed by the elec­tion re­sults and had ex­pressed his frus­tra­tion.An­oth­er sup­port­er de­scribed Row­ley as a mon­key, while oth­ers threat­ened phys­i­cal vi­o­lence against a par­tic­u­lar eth­nic group.

"I haven't seen these posts but I can say that they would nev­er be au­tho­rised by the par­ty," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.Asked if she was pre­pared to ad­dress these spe­cif­ic sup­port­ers about the com­ments, she said she would meet with the UNC's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive and the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and would chart the way for­ward.

Sec­re­tary of the Psy­chi­atric As­so­ci­a­tion Var­ma Deyals­ingh says be­cause of the trib­al na­ture of lo­cal pol­i­tics, it was nec­es­sary for lead­ers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties to set an ex­am­ple and en­cour­age their sup­port­ers to re­frain from racist con­ver­sa­tions and ac­cept the re­sults.

"It hurts so­ci­ety and es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren who are hear­ing this talk. It will be im­print­ed in their mind," Deyals­ingh said.He said that be­cause the elec­tion was long and drawn out, with di­rect at­tacks on the lead­ers, peo­ple went through an emo­tion­al roller coast­er.

"What hap­pens is that the sup­port­ers of the los­ing side go through a se­ries of psy­cho­log­i­cal events.

"They are go­ing through the phas­es of dis­be­lief, anger, bar­gain­ing, de­pres­sion and hope­ful­ly ac­cep­tance.

"But the anger phase is be­ing ex­pressed with these hate­ful and racist ver­bal at­tacks."He said peo­ple might re­gret their ac­tions and state­ments lat­er.He said the prob­lem could es­ca­late if sup­port­ers of the win­ning par­ty, af­ter be­ing at­tacked, chose to re­spond with the same vit­ri­ol.

This is some­thing which has al­ready oc­curred as some peo­ple have re­spond­ed to the posts by mak­ing ridi­cul­ing state­ments about Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Yes­ter­day, min­utes af­ter be­ing sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter in a cer­e­mo­ny at Queen's Hall, Row­ley was asked about the com­ments by re­porters. He dis­missed the ques­tion, ini­tial­ly say­ing he had not seen the com­ments be­fore adding that he had more im­por­tant things to dis­cuss, his first or­der of busi­ness be­ing to en­sure de­liv­ery of the bud­get as re­quired by law.