Rose­marie Sant

“A new low!”

That’s how Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud de­scribes the Oreo com­ment made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in ref­er­ence to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, as crit­i­cisms against the com­ment which has been dubbed “racist” con­tin­ued to grow.

But the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is de­fend­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar, say­ing her state­ments had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with race. One Op­po­si­tion MP mean­while told the T&T Guardian he is “proud” of the UNC leader.

Aboud told the T&T Guardian the state­ment sig­nalled “a com­mu­ni­ca­tion of weak­ness” on the part of the Op­po­si­tion leader.

“If some­one has a good point to make they do not need to dis­par­age any­one else and usu­al­ly, as taught to me by par­ents and grand­par­ents, try­ing to in­sult your op­po­nent is usu­al­ly a clear in­di­ca­tion that you have no point to make.”

Ad­dress­ing UNC sup­port­ers in Point-a-Pierre on Mon­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ref­er­enced the PM’s re­la­tion­ship with the so-called “one per cent.” She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment Row­ley leads of “help­ing their friends and the one per cent,” which has be­come the term used to de­scribe mem­bers of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, fol­low­ing a com­ment made dur­ing an in­ter­view with some mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty with the now de­ceased CNN culi­nary jour­nal­ist An­tho­ny Bour­dain.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “They tried to own Mr Man­ning they couldn’t do that… They tried to own me but I sent them pack­ing. They have their Oreo now who is their guy in Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley and that’s how the one per cent friends and fam­i­ly of Row­ley con­trol him.”

Yes­ter­day, Aboud said “the pro­nounce­ment is in it­self a new low.”

While some have sought to link the re­mark to the “Cal­cut­ta Ship” state­ment made by for­mer To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly­man Hilton Sandy years ago, Aboud said, “I would like to be count­ed among those who find both re­marks rep­re­hen­si­ble.”

The busi­ness­man said he longed for the day “when we will have lead­ers that see all men as broth­ers in the same way as Mar­tin Luther King and Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi.”

There have been calls for an apol­o­gy from Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the PM, but Aboud said, “Politi­cians al­ways feel is­su­ing an apol­o­gy is a sign of weak­ness and the pop­u­la­tion al­ways sees it as a sign of strength.”

For­mer trans­port min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment Stephen Cadiz said the state­ment was “down­right racist” and un­char­ac­ter­is­tic of the UNC leader.

“It was a stu­pid thing, I don’t know what pos­sessed her. I am ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed in her as a leader to not think be­fore she made the state­ment and if she did think be­fore she made it that is worse. I did not think she would be fol­low­ing gut­ter pol­i­tics,” Cadiz said.

Cadiz said there are some politi­cians who nat­u­ral­ly en­gage in “gut­ter pol­i­tics, but I don’t be­lieve that she is that per­son. I have nev­er had rea­son to be­lieve she is that kind of per­son, so why do it. The pop­u­la­tion does not ex­pect that kind of thing from her. It is not her style.”

The PNM Women’s League and the Arou­ca/Mal­oney con­stituen­cy have con­demned the state­ment as a “racist and of­fen­sive de­scrip­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley” and called for a pub­lic apol­o­gy.

But Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal told the T&T Guardian it was Gov­ern­ment spokesper­sons who should apol­o­gise to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty “for their hypocrisy, their lack of in­tel­lec­tu­al depth and their lack of un­der­stand­ing of very se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal is­sues.”

Mooni­lal, who was on the plat­form on Mon­day night when Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the com­ment, said she was deal­ing in a “con­tem­po­rary way” with a mat­ter raised by French writer Franz Fan­ton in his book ‘Black Skin White Masks.’

He said like Fan­ton, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was deal­ing with the ef­fect of coloni­sa­tion on third world lead­er­ship, “the is­sue of how third world lead­ers be­come ser­vants of their colo­nial mas­ters even when they be­come in­de­pen­dent.”

Mooni­lal said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ref­er­ence to Oreo cook­ies was “con­tem­po­rary, which peo­ple can re­late to and un­der­stand. I think Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar did well and had the courage to raise the is­sue and I am ex­treme­ly proud of her.”

He in­sist­ed that the state­ment “had noth­ing to do with race, what she raised is a uni­ver­sal is­sue. These are is­sues raised in Asia, Africa and in the for­mer third world coun­tries.”

In fact, he de­scribed it as a “deeply in­tel­lec­tu­al is­sue” which “de­serves dis­cus­sion.”

The UNC Women’s Arm al­so de­fend­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

In a press re­lease, the UNC women said the PNM Women’s League had failed to ac­knowl­edge the range of is­sues fac­ing the coun­try, in­clud­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, women who go miss­ing and the shut­down of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

The body said it would not al­low the is­sues to be swept un­der the car­pet and called on the PNM Women’s League and Gov­ern­ment to redi­rect their fo­cus on ques­tions sur­round­ing the im­pend­ing shut­down of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, “the on­go­ing fi­as­co of the fer­ry ser­vice, the in­crease of crimes against women, the dis­place­ment of fam­i­lies that will be af­fect­ed by the Curepe In­ter­change and the many oth­er re­al is­sues that are af­fect­ing the cit­i­zens.”