Grow up, TT - none of us are per­fect!

That mes­sage came from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi as he con­demned so­cial me­dia at­tacks on new Ch­agua­nas May­or and UNC coun­cil­lor Van­dana Mo­hit.

“I want to con­demn this act of misog­y­ny and the bru­tal act (which oc­curred) on a cit­i­zen of this coun­try,” Al-Rawi said in the Sen­ate on Wednes­day evening.

Af­ter nude pho­tos be­gan to cir­cu­late of Mo­hit on so­cial me­dia, she be­came the sub­ject of crit­i­cism and com­ments.

Mo­hit, the youngest Ch­agua­nas may­or was sworn in on Tues­day. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed Mo­hit on the at­tacks as have oth­er mem­bers of the UNC par­ty.

In the Sen­ate on Wednes­day while wind­ing up de­bate on a bill—to abol­ish pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries—PNM’s Al-Rawi re­ferred to cy­ber­crime leg­is­la­tion, adding, “A young woman has risen to the rank of may­or and I wish to con­demn the at­tacks be­ing put on her right now and to say—TT needs to grow up!”

He con­tin­ued, “We need to grow up and re­spect peo­ple, none of us are per­fect. None of us know the cir­cum­stances some­one may have found them­selves in and we ought to cease and de­sist im­me­di­ate­ly from at­tack­ing some­one in this so­ci­ety. I say so even if it’s a per­son from a po­lit­i­cal par­ty in op­po­si­tion to me. We have to do the right thing! I’d like as a sen­a­tor, on be­half of all of us here—I’m sure I speak for all of us—to put that rec­om­men­da­tion to the pub­lic,” Al-Rawi said.

He added, “Some­times we have to do the right thing as it’s the right thing to do.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the AG’s state­ments, Mo­hit said yes­ter­day, “It’s good to see that peo­ple are see­ing it in this light. I ap­pre­ci­ate the sup­port which has arisen and there has in­deed been an out­pour­ing of sup­port.”

On the pic­tures, she said, “I’m not en­ter­ing in­to this type of so­cial me­dia con­dem­na­tion/con­ver­sa­tion and any­thing that de­grades women. I’m not go­ing back in time as I have a lot of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on my shoul­ders—there’s a lot of work to do go­ing for­ward.”