Last Fri­day, "over­whelmed by the ex­u­ber­ant at­mos­phere" of a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in To­ba­go, as he lat­er put it, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment can­di­date for Rox­bor­ough/De­laford warned the crowd of "a ship at Cal­cut­ta wait­ing to sail to To­ba­go...Cal­cut­ta ship is com­ing down for you."

Hilton Sandy, who cur­rent­ly serves as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), clear­ly should have known bet­ter. His protes­ta­tions that he was mak­ing what turned out to be a clum­sy and wrong­head­ed ref­er­ence to the song Ja­ha­ji Bhai by Broth­er Mar­vin ring pro­found­ly hol­low.

There's been no ques­tion that the threat of dom­i­nance by the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and the grow­ing cul­tur­al mix in To­ba­go have played a part in the po­lit­i­cal ban­ter lead­ing up to the THA elec­tions. Mr Sandy was play­ing with a par­tic­u­lar­ly dead­ly bomb in his po­lit­i­cal tirade, and he has on­ly him­self to blame for the way it's ex­plod­ed in his face. The gaffe was so ob­vi­ous­ly out of line that PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley wast­ed no time in con­demn­ing the state­ment.

De­scrib­ing the state­ment and the sen­ti­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with it as hav­ing no part to play in the par­ty's cam­paign in To­ba­go, Dr Row­ley stat­ed un­equiv­o­cal­ly that: "It was wrong and I think he should–what­ev­er im­pli­ca­tions it had–he should apol­o­gise for it."

Mr Sandy has since done so, but it's hard to see how the enor­mi­ty of that er­ror missed him for so long. In­deed, it wasn't un­til the ri­val TOP par­ty start­ed mak­ing use of a record­ing of the state­ment and his own par­ty's con­dem­na­tion of the state­ment that he felt com­pelled to apol­o­gise for a state­ment that should have been with­drawn on the very day it was made.

At the time, the state­ment may have been the sub­ject of cheers by crowds fired up by po­lit­i­cal in­vec­tive and per­son­al­i­ty roast­ing. It must all have seemed quite clever and ap­pro­pri­ate back then–and that's why Mr Sandy, a sea­soned politi­cian and a ma­ture rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his con­stituen­cy, should step down from his post.

What he de­scribed as an er­ror played too clear­ly in­to the ever-present fear of racial and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences that has con­tin­ued to plague sen­si­ble po­lit­i­cal dis­course in T&T and which has found un­for­tu­nate root in the cam­paign for the THA.

In the past few weeks, gov­ern­ment spokes­men had al­leged that ex­act­ly this kind of claim was be­ing made on PNM plat­forms, which se­nior PNM mem­bers had de­nied. Mr Sandy, how­ev­er, walked straight in­to a trap by in­dulging in these in­flam­ma­to­ry, emp­ty ac­cu­sa­tions.

To have made such a com­ment, Mr Sandy must con­cede that he is racist, clue­less or an in­sen­si­tive po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­er, none of which qual­i­fies him to con­tin­ue as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Rox­bor­ough/De­laford or a fu­ture role in the as­sem­bly.

Dr Row­ley has been on the re­ceiv­ing end of such barbs, bear­ing with ad­mirable sto­icism the ac­cu­sa­tion that he had come "kur­ta-clad" to the Di­vali Na­gar of No­vem­ber 2012. The Op­po­si­tion Leader's sen­si­ble and calm re­sponse to that bit of po­lit­i­cal bait­ing must now be matched by a will­ing­ness to stamp out such sen­ti­ments when they sur­face with­in his own par­ty.

In 2013 there is no longer any room for politi­cians who so thought­less­ly play to the cheap seats and Orville Lon­don and Kei­th Row­ley should make a clear ex­am­ple of Hilton Sandy by set­ting his un­wel­come old-school style of po­lit­i­cal pi­cong aside. If Mr Sandy tru­ly be­lieves in the pub­lic record of in­tegri­ty and fair­ness he claimed in his apol­o­gy, then no one should have to ex­plain to him why he should step down.