Shir­van Williams

For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon is call­ing for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of this coun­try's am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions in Switzer­land, Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis. Gopee-Scoon, the Point Fortin MP, made the call fol­low­ing Cor­nelis' con­tro­ver­sial keynote ad­dress to the In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Diplo­ma­cy (ICD) Sym­po­sium on Cul­tur­al In­ter­na­tion­al Diplo­ma­cy and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment in Gene­va. The video of the ad­dress has al­ready re­ceived more than 11,000 views on Youtube and it is be­ing wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on Face­book.

Gopee-Scoon said the speech was "ab­solute­ly dis­gust­ing" and an "atroc­i­ty." She said an am­bas­sador is re­spect­ed as one of the high­est rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the coun­try and should be some­one who knows how to deal with in­ter­na­tion­al and mul­ti­cul­tur­al in­ter­ests.

She said the ap­point­ment of Bap­tiste-Cor­nelius as this coun­try's am­bas­sador to Gene­va was an ex­am­ple of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's poor se­lec­tion of diplo­mats. Gopee-Scoon said dam­age has been done to this coun­try's im­age. In her open­ing re­marks at the Gene­va event, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said: "This is my first keynote speech since I be­came an am­bas­sador. I had thought I would have stop mak­ing speech­es af­ter I left be­ing a min­is­ter."

She goes on to talk about her time as health min­is­ter and said she was giv­en the chance to do so be­cause not on­ly did she know the prime min­is­ter, but she was al­so her teacher at one point. "I caused chaos. I told the doc­tors they were mak­ing mis­takes, they hat­ed the fact that I point­ed out they were mak­ing mis­takes.

They plead­ed for me to get out so I agreed with them on that plea and so I gave them so much more stress, so they would plea loud­er. Then I was re­placed by the MP who I was the cam­paign man­ag­er for," she said.

She added that the diplo­mat­ic po­si­tion is more work than she bar­gained for, adding that the Gov­ern­ment "kin­da cheat­ed me." She said mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is not a good word to use any­more as it had bad con­no­ta­tions. She goes on to de­scribe her sis­ter as "fer­tile" af­ter hav­ing six chil­dren.

Cor­nelius said she used her in­flu­ence as a lec­tur­er to dis­play im­ages of Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her lec­ture. She al­so speaks about how she found her hus­band on the In­ter­net. She said she was one of the first per­sons to use the In­ter­net to find a hus­band and she did so be­cause her cowork­ers did not like her "lim­ing part­ner." While she tells the sto­ry of her mar­riage she re­veals that her In­ter­net name was "trop­i­cal bear" while her hus­band's was "pen­guin."

At an­oth­er point in the speech Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said she nev­er want­ed to be a politi­cian be­cause "pol­i­tics is full of liars." Cor­nelius al­so said she loved to par­ty and used Anslem Dou­glas' song Who let the Dogs out to con­vey her point. "I have wined to that song. When we say wine we do not mean the drink, we mean a gy­ra­tion of the hips. I am an ex­pert of that. One day I will teach you," she told the gath­er­ing.