Gail Alexan­der

Fri­day's in­ci­dent, in which an­ti-prop­er­ty tax pro­test­ers were ar­rest­ed and beat­en out­side of the Red House in Port-of-Spain, is a sad day in T&T's his­to­ry of democ­ra­cy, and should be an over­whelm­ing wake-up call for the pub­lic, says Bas­deo Pan­day. Speak­ing from Lon­don yes­ter­day, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was com­ment­ing on the clash, when a group at­tempt­ed to stage a peace­ful demon­stra­tion against the gov­ern­ment's prop­er­ty tax. Fi­tun leader David Ab­du­lah–who is al­so OW­TU gen­er­al sec­re­tary and Peo­ple's Democ­ra­cy mem­ber–was ar­rest­ed. Four OW­TU mem­bers who tried to pro­tect Ab­du­lah were hit by ba­ton-wield­ing po­lice. Pro­test­ers rep­re­sent­ed unions, the COP, UNC, NAR and oth­er groups; among them ex-NAR min­is­ter Lin­coln My­ers, in a wheel­chair. The in­ci­dent took place on Knox Street, as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira pi­lot­ed the Prop­er­ty Tax Bill in the Red House.

Af­ter Ab­du­lah's ar­rest, UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal left the de­bate in Par­lia­ment and led pro­test­ers in march­ing around the Red House, away from where po­lice had re­moved them. Join­ing in were UNC MPs Vas­ant Bharath, Tim Gopeesingh, Hamza Rafeeq and Sen­a­tor Wade Mark. UNC's po­lit­i­cal leader Pan­day said: "I have warned a hun­dred times that this gov­ern­ment was aim­ing to sup­press peo­ple's voic­es and mil­i­tarise the state, and it is com­ing to pass. "But I'm very hap­py to see that the peo­ple of T&T are fi­nal­ly wak­ing up and are be­gin­ning to strug­gle for T&T's in­ter­est and do­ing what is right. "Peo­ple are now be­gin­ning to speak out and fight against the con­se­quences. The coun­try must unite in the strug­gle, be­cause it is the men­tal­i­ty of the PNM gov­ern­ment to crush any op­po­nents. "And the whole coun­try saw that in ac­tion out­side the Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, when peo­ple at­tempt­ed to stage a pas­sive protest.

"It is a sad, sad day for T&T and for the Par­lia­ment, out­side which this in­ci­dent oc­curred, since this is the high­est seat of democ­ra­cy in the land.

"Many protests have been al­lowed to take place out­side the Par­lia­ment be­fore. "Peo­ple need to take heed and wake up for 2010. If not, all of their rights will be tak­en away by this ad­min­is­tra­tion. "T&T is go­ing down­hill and the slide will con­tin­ue if peo­ple do not stand up and be count­ed." COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an said: "It ap­peared to be an ex­ces­sive use of force in what was a le­git­i­mate protest. "It's a sig­nal of the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to quell any kind of protest over the next year, which is some­thing we can't be com­fort­able about."

"I didn't get any im­pres­sion any laws were bro­ken. But it's a bad omen for quelling fu­ture protests. "It's con­sis­tent with what I've said all along, that re­pres­sive pol­i­tics is some­thing we have to guard against. I sense this is how the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem re­sponds to le­git­i­mate threats." Dook­er­an said COP would con­tin­ue to sup­port pro­test­ers if they re­sumed. He said Gov­ern­ment's lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty on the Prop­er­ty Tax and Ude­cott was ap­palling. In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal said yes­ter­day he didn't see Fri­day's in­ci­dent since he was in Par­lia­ment. He added: "It was peo­ple's de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest and that hap­pened yes­ter­day... but I don't know that any one of us could be blamed for what hap­pened."