Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day hit back at his pre­de­ces­sor and MP for Lopinot/Arou­ca Mar­vin Gon­za­les for call­ing him “duncey”, urg­ing young­sters not to give up if they are be­ing mocked for strug­gling with some­thing new.

He re­spond­ed to the crit­i­cism he re­ceived about his first con­tri­bu­tion to Par­lia­ment while speak­ing dur­ing the de­bate to Adopt the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee Re­port.

Gon­za­les, at a meet­ing in To­ba­go last week, poked fun at Alexan­der for strug­gling to de­liv­er his ad­dress in Par­lia­ment on April 19 with­out stum­bling or awk­ward paus­es, say­ing it was hard for many to lis­ten to.

Gon­za­les even said that Alexan­dert's read­ing skills were an em­bar­rass­ment to the coun­try's first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams.

Gon­za­les said: “Dr Er­ic Williams did not die for that. (For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter) Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly didn’t go in­to po­lit­i­cal bat­tle for that. PNM ed­u­ca­tion where we put and in­vest­ed bil­lions of dol­lars to pro­duce some­one like Roger Alexan­der?”

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day Alexan­der coun­tered.

“He said I was duncey, Mr Speak­er. To me, duncey is know­ing rain is about to fall in June and you fail to clean the wa­ter­ways and cause the place to flood."

As his col­leagues thumped their desks in agree­ment, Alexan­der added: “I would like my Prime Min­is­ter to ex­plain this dunce­ness to me. Dunce­ness is call­ing ear­ly elec­tion and get­ting licks. I think the worst of all is Fri­day be­fore the elec­tions, call­ing in per­sons, every­body come, em­ploy­ment for all, and then on Mon­day you are no longer in of­fice.”

Alexan­der, not want­i­ng to let up, re­called Gon­za­les’ time as a po­lice of­fi­cer say­ing he was called “Just wouldn’t” as he "just wouldn’t show up to work, just wouldn’t take re­ports." But be­fore the Tu­na­puna MP could con­tin­ue he was stopped as Gon­za­les him­self ob­ject­ed to his con­tri­bu­tion.

Af­ter be­ing al­lowed to con­tin­ue, Alexan­der took the time to use him­self as an ex­am­ple say­ing he wished the chil­dren in the cham­ber were still present to hear his en­cour­age­ment for them­selves.

“To all boys and girls of this na­tion when­ev­er or if ever you strug­gle or strug­gle with a sit­u­a­tion, whether it is for stud­ies, a new sub­ject, or a new po­si­tion and you're be­ing com­ment­ed on and laughed at, don’t give up! Keep go­ing, have con­fi­dence in your­self and achieve your goal.”

Alexan­der said he and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment were a team of win­ners and hoped that Dr Williams was now proud af­ter the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was beat­en at the poll on April 28.