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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Alexander hits back at Marvin's 'duncey' label

Tells youngsters don't give up if being laughed at

by

15 days ago
20250624
Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander interacts with a Parliamentary police officer as he makes his way to the Red House to attend the sitting of the Parliament yesterday.

Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander interacts with a Parliamentary police officer as he makes his way to the Red House to attend the sitting of the Parliament yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

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.


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