A mere apol­o­gy isn't enough.That's the view of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who's de­mand­ing Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee be fired im­me­di­ate­ly if con­tro­ver­sial com­ments at­trib­uted to him on the trag­ic death of Japan­ese pan play­er Asa­mi Na­gakiya are ac­cu­rate.

In an Op­po­si­tion state­ment yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar strong­ly con­demned Tim Kee's re­port­ed state­ments, adding:

"May­or Tim Kee didn't even of­fer con­do­lences on the death of Ms Na­gakiya but pro­ceed­ed to of­fer scan­dalous spec­u­la­tion in re­la­tion to the pos­si­ble cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

"It is un­be­liev­able that in a 21st cen­tu­ry so­ci­ety, the may­or of the cap­i­tal city can ut­ter such out­ra­geous and misog­y­nis­tic state­ments about the death of a tal­ent­ed young woman, giv­en that the facts are not yet known."

She added: "You do not even know the young la­dy yet you are mak­ing in­cred­u­lous as­sump­tions. If these re­ports are true, May­or Tim Kee must im­me­di­ate­ly be dis­missed from of­fice as he has demon­strat­ed a lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and the pro­gres­sive in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty to hold a po­si­tion of lead­er­ship.

"Such ret­ro­grade think­ing con­tributes to gen­der in­equity and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of misog­y­ny in T&T and is es­pe­cial­ly dis­turb­ing when it is ex­hib­it­ed in per­sons in pub­lic life and is ir­re­spon­si­ble, reck­less and com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able.

"This blan­ket in­dict­ment on women as the en­ablers of their abuse has no place in a mod­ern so­ci­ety and I think that the may­or must apol­o­gise to the fam­i­ly of Ms Na­gakiya and all women for his atro­cious com­ments. No one de­serves to be abused."