In­cum­bent St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen has called on Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to apol­o­gise to for­mer school­mate Im­ran Khan di­rect­ly for a bul­ly­ing in­ci­dent at St Mary’s Col­lege 33 years ago.

Ameen made the call dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ meet­ing in Tu­na­puna on Thurs­day evening.

Ameen and oth­er UNC speak­ers blast­ed Young on the mat­ter. Young, who’s said he ad­dressed the Khan is­sue frontal­ly, said he “apol­o­gised to every­one who’d been bul­lied and every child who has been” and that was “as far as” he’d go at this stage.

But Ameen said in­for­ma­tion on the is­sue rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns about Young’s suit­abil­i­ty to be Prime Min­is­ter. Cit­ing jour­nal­ist/for­mer CIC stu­dent Lasana Liburd’s ac­count of the is­sue, Ameen said, “Liburd said in his ar­ti­cle that Khan was ‘pushed to re­tal­i­a­tion’. Don’t let (PNM) put any spin on it!”

She added that dur­ing Young’s re­sponse to the mat­ter when ques­tioned dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, “at no time did he take own­er­ship of the sit­u­a­tion. You can­not, when asked to apol­o­gise say, ‘well I apol­o­gise to every child in the world who was ever bul­lied in the whole his­to­ry of the uni­verse’. That’s non­sense! ... Peo­ple want you to apol­o­gise for what you did!”

She added, “Ac­cept what you did, take own­er­ship and apol­o­gise. I hear him say­ing ‘that was 33 years ago’. But a ma­ture re­spon­si­ble in­di­vid­ual will take own­er­ship of wrong­do­ing and apol­o­gise un­re­served­ly! His re­sponse is child­ish and im­ma­ture. Stu­art Young, you have re­fused to do what is right- re­fused to apol­o­gise.”

Ameen said while Young had re­fused to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and apol­o­gise, “he hasn’t de­nied that it hap­pened.”

“We can­not dis­miss his ac­tion of 33 years ago and say he was a child, as I’m telling you there’s a pat­tern from the class­room up. His be­hav­iour as an adult mir­rors his be­hav­iour in his school days. There were in­stances of in­tim­i­da­tion, ver­bal ag­gres­sion, dis­mis­sive­ness to­wards his op­po­nents,” she al­leged, claim­ing Young has “this ar­ro­gance and hos­til­i­ty.”

“It’s ev­i­dent in his treat­ment even to­day of jour­nal­ists, po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents… you all ever see his so­cial me­dia posts?” Ameen said, as she al­so re­ferred to the Oc­to­ber 2024 “hot mi­cro­phone” in­ci­dent in Par­lia­ment, where Young’s com­ments to­ward UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were record­ed. He lat­er apol­o­gised in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for his com­ments.

Cit­ing sui­cides be­cause of bul­ly­ing, Ameen queried what Young did to deal with bul­ly­ing when he was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

”Noth­ing! So, Young’s sud­den con­cern on bul­ly­ing and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims can’t be se­ri­ous. All those in the PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) stay­ing qui­et af­ter so many of them ob­ject­ed to him be­ing Prime Min­is­ter. Par­ty loy­al­ty can­not out­weigh your moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty!”

Mean­while, Ameen said Young could not hold the Gov­ern­ment to­geth­er and claimed the PNM did not plan to have the elec­tion.

“They haven’t booked a sin­gle me­dia spot. UNC book all since last Oc­to­ber. We’re ready!”

In­cum­bent Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee claimed Young had no choice but to call an elec­tion as he feared re­sum­ing Par­lia­ment due to a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar might have brought, “and the pos­si­bil­i­ty PNM MPs might have told her to bring it."