Sascha Wil­son

Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day wrote to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, call­ing on him to fire Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion mem­ber Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Row­ley's call for her dis­missal was based on a re­port in the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, in which Ram­per­sad as­sert­ed that the "Cal­cut­ta ship" state­ments made dur­ing the lead-up to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion were part of a well-planned PNM strat­e­gy. The Op­po­si­tion Leader said Ram­per­sad's com­ments amount­ed to a breach of her oath of of­fice.

"I have tak­en spe­cial no­tice of a re­port pub­lished in the T&T Guardian news­pa­pers to­day (yes­ter­day) on Page A6 ti­tled 'Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion­er: Talk of Cal­cut­ta ship planned PNM strat­e­gy.'

"The ar­ti­cle ev­i­dent­ly as­serts that Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, a com­mis­sion­er of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion (EOC), has ar­tic­u­lat­ed her be­lief that the 'Cal­cut­ta ship' state­ment made by Mr Hilton Sandy dur­ing the run-up to the THA 2013 elec­tion was not an er­ror, but a de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy of the par­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, she has been re­port­ed as de­clar­ing her said opin­ion on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion."

Row­ley said he and deputy leader Orville Lon­don have pub­licly and un­am­bigu­ous­ly dis­as­so­ci­at­ed them­selves and the PNM from thes­tate­ment,and have made it clear that such sen­ti­ments "are not the pol­i­cy of our mul­ti-eth­nic, mul­tira­cial and gen­er­al­ly di­verse par­ty."

"Dr Ram­per­sad has cho­sen to de­clare this warped view to the pub­lic at large, with­out a shred of ev­i­dence to sup­port her pre­pos­ter­ous ac­cu­sa­tions," he said. Row­ley stressed that Sandy had re­peat­ed­ly apol­o­gised for "this un­for­tu­nate and un­ac­cept­able state­ment," and he there­fore re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that the state­ment was par­ty strat­e­gy.

Ram­per­sad, he said, had "un­doubt­ed­ly demon­strat­ed she isin­ca­pable­of im­par­tial­ly in dis­charg­ing her func­tions as an Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty com­mis­sion­er and that she is in no­tice­able breach of her oath." He al­so point­ed out that the EOC had re­ceived a com­plaint about Sandy's state­ment.

Quot­ing from Sec­tion 28 (2) of the EqualOp­por­tu­nity­Act and the oath of of­fice for com­mis­sion­ers, he said: "Her breach is even more se­ri­ous when one con­sid­ers the fact that the men­tioned state­ment is cur­rent­ly the­sub­jectof a com­plaint to the EOC, and with­out a shred of ev­i­dence and in breach of all prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice, she has made a whol­ly un­jus­ti­fied, bi­ased, con­tro­ver­sial, re­volt­ing and by far, an im­prop­er de­c­la­ra­tion in pub­lic about the PNM.

She is patent­ly un­fit to be an EOC com­mis­sion­er and should be dis­missed forth­with."