Gail Alexan­der

While Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says re­cent con­tro­ver­sial re­marks by Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee do not war­rant his dis­missal, the PM yes­ter­day dis­tanced his Gov­ern­ment from any "vic­tim blam­ing" per­ceived to have been done by Tim Kee.

Row­ley made the point at his con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day af­ter Tim Kee's re­port­ed con­tro­ver­sial com­ments on the dis­cov­ery of the body of Japan­ese tenor pan play­er Asa­mi Na­gakiya on Wednes­day caused a pub­lic furore.

Tim Kee's state­ments, which ap­peared to link the woman's death to a cul­ture of lewd­ness, has gar­nered wide­spread crit­i­cism from fem­i­nists, women's rights groups, politi­cians and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Un­der pres­sure, Tim Kee yes­ter­day apol­o­gised to all women and T&T, claim­ing his com­ments were tak­en out of con­text but women's groups and Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have called for Tim Kee's re­moval, say­ing an apol­o­gy isn't enough.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he may have "mis­spo­ken" on the mat­ter but it was no rea­son for his dis­missal. He al­so stressed his Gov­ern­ment did not sup­port vic­tim blam­ing.

A num­ber of women's rights ac­tivists plan to protest out­side Tim Kee's of­fice to­day. A protest is al­so planned for out­side the T&T High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don. An on­line pe­ti­tion seek­ing Tim Kee's dis­missal has so far gar­nered more than 4,000 sig­na­tures.

Tim Kee's apol­o­gy, which came via state­ment from his of­fice, stat­ed: "His Wor­ship the May­or un­equiv­o­cal­ly apol­o­gis­es to women and the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion who were of­fend­ed by re­marks at­trib­uted to him fol­low­ing the death of Car­ni­val vis­i­tor and mas play­er, Asa­mi Na­gakiya.

"May­or Tim Kee says his com­ments were com­plete­ly mis­con­strued and one par­tic­u­lar head­line un­for­tu­nate­ly stat­ed 'PoS may­or crit­i­cis­es women' draw­ing fire even be­fore the ar­ti­cle was read.

"May­or Tim Kee said he ad­vised women to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pro­tect them­selves, as so many women are the vic­tims of abuse at the hands of oth­ers."

The state­ment said Tim Kee agreed "his com­ments could have been con­sid­ered out of line."

But it main­tained that de­spite the anger be­ing ex­pressed from many quar­ters, in­clud­ing fem­i­nist groups and ac­tivists, "he has al­so re­ceived calls of sup­port from sev­er­al women agree­ing with him on the lack of mod­esty dis­played by some women and girls on the streets dur­ing Car­ni­val."

Tim Kee's state­ment added: "There is in­deed a con­cern about the be­hav­iour of both male and fe­male mas play­ers gen­er­al­ly, as they are now be­ing em­u­lat­ed by chil­dren who be­lieve that lewd be­hav­iour and Car­ni­val go hand-in-hand.

"It is with deep re­gret to have to speak of the death of Ms Na­gakiya, who has been a wel­come vis­i­tor and close friend of the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty in T&T for sev­er­al years."

Yes­ter­day, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie steered clear of com­ment­ing on Tim Kee's state­ment at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.