Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@guardian.co.tt

Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath has brand­ed crit­ics of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage as “pre­ten­tious, spine­less in­di­vid­u­als,” as he came to the de­fence of her con­tro­ver­sial ad­dress to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Padarath said, “To­day, we will take no ad­vice from those pre­ten­tious, spine­less in­di­vid­u­als whose crit­i­cism cen­tres around cui­sine and re­li­gion.”

He al­so ac­cused some crit­ics with­in the In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty of be­ing “self-loathing” and “self-hat­ing,” claim­ing they had dis­tanced them­selves from their cul­tur­al and racial iden­ti­ty in pur­suit of ac­cep­tance and val­i­da­tion from what he de­scribed as a “par­a­sitic oli­garchy.”

Padarath did not iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als he was re­fer­ring to.

His com­ments fol­low crit­i­cism of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s spe­cial In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage to her “UNC fam­i­ly” by for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj and Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj.

Suni­ty Ma­haraj has said many In­do-Trinida­di­ans were em­bar­rassed by the mes­sage and re­ject­ed what she de­scribed as its “mean-spirit­ed­ness” and di­vi­sive tone. Vi­jay Ma­haraj al­so crit­i­cised the re­marks, say­ing they had con­tributed to racial di­vi­sion in the coun­try.

Re­ject­ing those crit­i­cisms, Padarath in­sist­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s mes­sage was di­rect­ed at a po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy rather than a racial group.

“The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter’s very frank, bla­tant­ly hon­est and thought-pro­vok­ing mes­sage to the UNC mem­ber­ship speaks to a re­al­i­ty that had ex­ist­ed un­der the PNM for decades in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“It is meant to em­bold­en the UNC mem­ber­ship and not a seg­ment of the so­ci­ety based on race.”

Padarath fur­ther ar­gued that some mem­bers of the In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty had en­gaged in “self-loathing be­cause of their cul­tur­al and racial iden­ti­ty” in an ef­fort to gain val­i­da­tion from oth­ers.

He ques­tioned how such in­di­vid­u­als could un­der­stand the strug­gles of mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties if they had spent their lives “run­ning from iden­ti­fy­ing with those same com­mu­ni­ties.”

The Cou­va South MP al­so al­leged that some of the Prime Min­is­ter’s crit­ics had en­gaged in “back­room deals” with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“Some of these very crit­ics of the Prime Min­is­ter’s In­de­pen­dence mes­sage en­gaged in back­room deals in an at­tempt to take over the UNC by bro­ker­ing deals with the PNM ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion,” he claimed.

Again, Padarath did not iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly in­volved or pro­vide ev­i­dence in the re­lease to sup­port the al­le­ga­tion.

He ac­cused the un­named crit­ics of at­tack­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar for high­light­ing what she viewed as in­jus­tices suf­fered by her po­lit­i­cal base while hid­ing be­hind “the cloak of In­de­pen­dence and re­li­gion.”

Padarath al­so al­leged that they had “propped the PNM in ex­change for favour and val­i­da­tion in the past.”

He sig­nalled that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sup­port­ers would con­tin­ue to ag­gres­sive­ly chal­lenge crit­i­cism of both the Prime Min­is­ter and the UNC.

“This dis­pen­sa­tion of the UNC is not pre­pared to sit back and al­low these self-serv­ing and self-hat­ing crit­ics to go un­scathed. We will be there at every twist and turn to de­fend our leader, our par­ty and our poli­cies,” Padarath said.