United National Congress leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has accused Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his Government of using race baiting in their political campaign in order to paint her political party as a threat to Afro-Trinidadians.
“Over the past few months, I have seen the PNM reverting to the use of race to campaign. The PNM Government has not built one house since entering office in 2015,” Persad-Bissessar said at the party’s Monday Night Forum at the Brazil High School.
Like the colonial masters, Persad-Bissessar said Rowley was now using race to divide the Afro and Indo-Trinidadians.
“They create this false race bogey that the UNC is anti-African and paints UNC as a threat to the survival and prosperity of Afro-Trinidadians. They have started that narrative, they see elections are coming. You see it in the writings of their paid columnists and their trolls on social media,” she said.
Persad-Bissessar again defended the decision to build the UWI South Campus in Penal/Debe, saying it was built because the land was available and it was a key location which would have given persons in South and Central access to tertiary education.
“The PNM has refused to open this campus because they think South only have Indo, descendants of Indo,” she said, adding “constituencies such as Point Fortin, La Brea, San Fernando East and West, Mayaro etcetera would benefit but instead Government opted to use race in a very skilful way in ill-speaking the project.”
Calling on citizens not to be fooled by the race talk, Persad-Bissessar said, “As a people, we need to stop this constant hate and fear against each other. This is how the PNM friends and financiers maintain control, by creating chronic fear against each other and manipulating you into dehumanising each other.”
She promised that when she gets back into office there will be opportunities for all races to prosper. She also vowed to offer land incentives and homes to poor Afro-Trinidadians, who historically have been deprived of property ownership, once she gets into office.
She said during colonialism, Afro-Trinidadians were denied opportunities for land ownership because the colonial elites wanted them to be continually enslaved.
“The placing of freed slaves into slums was a deliberate act to keep them into a forced type of slavery by trapping them in a vicious cycle of low wages, poor living conditions and no property ownership rights. This is a problem we will still face today, where young Afro-Trinidadians have difficulty in obtaining property ownership,” she said.
Saying Indo-Trinidadians had “an advantaged start” over the Afro-Trinidadians, as their forefathers received land in lieu of a passage back to India, Persad-Bissessar said, “The Indo-Trinidadians must acknowledge that the Afro-Trinidadians were wronged by these acts and while it is also difficult for many Indo-Trinidadians to also obtain land and ownership now, it is a more difficult task for others because of historical discrimination.”
However, she said when the UNC gets into office the poor will get opportunities for land and housing.
“I promise you, I pledge tonight, when you put us back into Government we will reintroduce all these land and home owning programmes and incentives so we could make right what went wrong in our history, “ she said.
She stressed that until all races see each other as brothers and sisters and not competitors or enemies, T&T was not going to move forward.
“The status quo will remain and one small group of persons will possess the majority of the nation’s wealth,” she added.
She noted that when she was prime minister she led the charge for change by offering affordable land and homeownership opportunities for the poor Afro-Trini and Indo-Trini families, many of whom were squatters.
“This is why I had introduced programmes such as Land for the Landless; squatter regularisation; increased grants for home repairs and construction; sale of HDC homes for one dollar; certificates of comfort and development of roads, drainage and utilities in many squatting areas,” Persad-Bissessar added.
