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Saturday, March 15, 2025

UNC heaps scorn on Young’s plan to curb social media abuse

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6 days ago
20250310
Opposition Oropouche MP Davendranath Tancoo speaks during the the United National Congress’ weekly media conference in Chaguanas yesterday.

Opposition Oropouche MP Davendranath Tancoo speaks during the the United National Congress’ weekly media conference in Chaguanas yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress chair­man Dave Tan­coo has heaped scorn on act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s plan to curb the so­cial me­dia abuse of women - and Tan­coo says the Op­po­si­tion is ab­solute­ly ready for gen­er­al elec­tion when­ev­er Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley “or new PM” Young calls it.

Tan­coo spoke on both is­sues at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing.

Dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Na­tion­al Women’s League’s In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day cel­e­bra­tions at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day, Young vowed to bring leg­is­la­tion to re­form so­cial me­dia and tar­get the ir­re­spon­si­ble use of it by in­di­vid­u­als tar­get­ing women in par­tic­u­lar should the PNM win the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

On Young’s plans to curb so­cial me­dia abuse of women, how­ev­er, Tan­coo said, “Is Gov­er­ment say­ing they’re go­ing to lim­it or ‘po­lice’ the use of so­cial me­dia? So­cial me­dia is there for a pur­pose and a lot of the in­for­ma­tion com­ing out against this Gov­ern­ment has been via so­cial me­dia. It’s very in­ter­est­ing that has be­come the is­sue for the min­is­ter.”

“It’s al­so an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion, as this is the same gen­tle­man .. (re­gard­ing whom) so­cial me­dia pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence of his mis­con­duct - his at­tack against a fe­male Par­lia­men­tar­i­an ... Is Young look­ing at polic­ing so­cial me­dia be­cause he was caught abus­ing a fe­male Par­lia­men­tar­i­an?” Tan­coo added in an in­di­rect ref­er­ence to the re­marks Young made about UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Par­lia­ment last year and sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised for.

Lee said, “It’s a good sound­bite as an in­di­vid­ual who’s as­pir­ing to be the next prime min­is­ter but I re­al­ly don’t be­lieve Young will keep his word, as for the last 10 years he sat with in­di­vid­u­als in his Gov­ern­ment who said the most de­grad­ing words on women and he said noth­ing. So he wouldn’t do any­thing dif­fer­ent.”

Tan­coo added, “The me­dia has giv­en Stu­art a ‘free pass’, as they seem to have for­got­ten he was a ma­jor play­er in the Gov­ern­ment in the last decade ... all these plans, poli­cies and ac­tions that he’s sud­den­ly re­veal­ing, why didn’t he do it then? It’s all elec­tion PR for elec­tions, but un­der PNM ‘promis­es nev­er ma­te­ri­alise.”

Mean­while, he said UNC’s can­di­dates will be named as and when re­quired in the course of the buildup of the elec­tion.

“The UNC will an­nounce can­di­dates when we’re ready, we have a wealth of per­son­nel and in­for­ma­tion to se­lect from ...”

The UNC has so far an­nounced 11 can­di­dates out of the 39 Trinidad con­stituen­cies it’s con­test­ing. Lee said UNC’s leader has al­ways re­vealed plans when­ev­er she speaks and the par­ty’s man­i­festo will be rolled out as she speaks.

On per­sons leav­ing the UNC to join oth­er par­ties, Tan­coo said, “This is a free and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try, the UNC’s a dis­ci­plined pro­duc­tive par­ty. Peo­ple are free to go wher­ev­er they want. I’m glad to see peo­ple of­fer­ing them­selves for pub­lic of­fice. But run­ning a coun­try isn’t a tea par­ty, it’s not about looks or speech­es. I’ve had the ben­e­fit of sit­ting in the Cab­i­net as fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er to the prime min­is­ter - run­ning a coun­try is se­ri­ous busi­ness.

“Cit­i­zens should look at per­sons of­fer­ing them­selves and de­ter­mine if they’re truth­ful­ly ca­pa­ble of run­ning a coun­try and what these peo­ple can do if they ever end up in of­fice. We’ve seen what PNM can do and what UNC has been able to. So, peo­ple will be very aware of peo­ple en­ter­ing this for oth­er rea­sons.”

Tan­coo said he’d seen this be­fore in the last Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

“There have been struc­tured group is­sues where peo­ple would have left UNC in a co­or­di­nat­ed, or­ches­trat­ed way. That’s par for the course, it’s pol­i­tics. But you’ll al­so have no­ticed more peo­ple join­ing UNC,” he said.

Lee called on Gov­ern­ment for ac­count­abil­i­ty on the State of the Emer­gency.

“The three months is al­most over and Gov­ern­ment’s yet to ac­count on what we’ve gained for the sus­pen­sion of our rights.”


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