Richard?Lord

Cit­i­zens who say the re­designed $50 note is evil are en­gag­ing in acts of di­vi­sive­ness, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Rudranath In­dars­ingh said yes­ter­day. He and his Cab­i­net col­league, Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas, said claims of oc­cul­tic sym­bols in the de­sign of the new bill are per­cep­tion, not re­al­i­ty.

The re­designed $50 note, which was put in­to cir­cu­la­tion ear­li­er this month, has been the source of con­sid­er­able de­bate since then, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial net­works, with many crit­i­cis­ing its de­sign. The new bill is al­so the fo­cus of a vi­ral video.When the new note was launched by the Cen­tral Bank it was de­scribed as de­pict­ing "the nat­ur­al beau­ty and vi­brant en­er­gy of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

It is made of poly­mer, mak­ing this coun­try the first Caribbean na­tion to is­sue poly­mer notes, the bank added.How­ev­er, many cit­i­zens have been speak­ing out against one of the fea­tures of the note, a pic­ture of a young fe­male mas­quer­ad­er in an award-win­ning Car­ni­val cos­tume.While the Cen­tral Bank says that pic­ture "cap­tures the en­er­gy of our peo­ple", some have com­plained on so­cial me­dia that it is a de­pic­tion of a ser­pent queen and even the dev­il.

One video shows a close-up view of the mas­quer­ad­er's head­piece, de­scrib­ing it as an im­age of col­lec­tion of snakes.Dou­glas in de­fend­ing the im­age, said it was one of the most beau­ti­ful works of art and her­itage in the coun­try and the re­designed note was "the most beau­ti­ful mon­ey" ever pro­duced in T&T."The greater evil is what peo­ple are per­ceiv­ing about the note," he said.

The min­is­ter said con­tro­ver­sy over the $50 bill is­sue re­mind­ed him of the so-called weath­er drag­on which was atop the Red House up to the ear­ly 1990's. Ac­cord­ing to Dou­glas, peo­ple er­ro­neous­ly blamed that "drag­on" for the many evils and ills tak­ing place in the coun­try at that time and it was re­moved by the then PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dou­glas said af­ter he heard some of the claims be­ing made about the new cur­ren­cy, he "went back and looked at the pic­ture and I don't get it. It is not evil."He ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to "de­sist from al­low­ing them­selves to be abused by su­per­sti­tion and necro­man­cy " and ad­vised those with con­cerns about the note be­ing re­flec­tive of the dev­il to "go to your church and pray."

In­dars­ingh said it was clear that cit­i­zens were us­ing their free­dom of speech to en­gage in di­vi­sive­ness, hid­ing their iden­ti­ties on so­cial me­dia while en­gag­ing in acts of a di­vi­sive na­ture. In­dars­ingh said the Cen­tral Bank had made it clear that it chose things that rep­re­sent­ed the peo­ple of the coun­try in pro­duc­ing the re­designed note.The $50 note was re­designed af­ter the pre­vi­ous one looked sim­i­lar to the $20.