The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is con­demn­ing one po­lit­i­cal leader for of­fen­sive com­ments he made to­wards the Gov­ern­ment, af­ter the tragedy that claimed the lives of Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren on Mon­day.

In a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der cal­lous­ly in­sult­ed a griev­ing Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is for her re­sponse to her col­league’s death at the scene.

In re­sponse, the PNM Women’s League yes­ter­day called Alexan­der’s com­ments dis­re­spect­ful and ac­cused him of try­ing to ad­vance his po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

The group said in­stead of of­fer­ing com­fort or recog­ni­tion of the fam­i­ly’s suf­fer­ing, Alexan­der chose to cre­ate fur­ther dis­cord. More­so, the PNM said, it was trou­bling to wit­ness an at­tempt to politi­cise a mo­ment of per­son­al grief.

In a re­lease, the par­ty group said, “It is deeply con­cern­ing when we see in­di­vid­u­als us­ing such trag­ic events as a plat­form for set­tling per­son­al scores or ad­vanc­ing par­ti­san agen­das. This ap­proach is ul­ti­mate­ly dis­re­spect­ful to the lives lost and to the fam­i­ly, who re­main in mourn­ing. Tragedies should not be re­duced to po­lit­i­cal am­mu­ni­tion; they are mo­ments for re­flec­tion and em­pa­thy... We are deeply con­cerned by the ap­proach Mr Alexan­der has tak­en in ad­dress­ing this tragedy. It is ev­i­dent that your fo­cus is pri­mar­i­ly on ad­vanc­ing your po­lit­i­cal agen­da rather than of­fer­ing the em­pa­thy and sol­i­dar­i­ty that is des­per­ate­ly need­ed at this time.”

Al­so crit­i­cis­ing Alexan­der’s com­ments, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith said, “Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der has reached a new low with his bar­rage of class­less at­tacks, in posts and in videos, not on­ly against Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who dared to dis­play an­guish af­ter los­ing a friend, but against the de­ceased Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian her­self, a moth­er who per­ished along with two of her chil­dren in yes­ter­day’s trag­ic house fire.

“The les­son he is teach­ing the na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the youths, is that pol­i­tics has no stan­dards of de­cen­cy or hu­man­i­ty, and once you op­pose some­one, any and every­thing is fair game.”