RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Cab­i­net min­is­ters have been forced to look over their East­er plans and wear their masks more fre­quent­ly, ever since At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi got a tongue-lash­ing from the Prime Min­is­ter for not wear­ing a mask.

Speak­ing at a lease dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion at Mara­bel­la on Wednes­day, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat poked fun at his col­league.

"My col­league, Faris Al Rawi, the pop­u­lar At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. The man who has caused us to be wear­ing these masks more than ever now. Thank God I am not an arm wrestler," Ram­barat said.

He teased: "Arm wrestling?  This is what you were do­ing?"

"But it could hap­pen to any one of us,” Ramb­harat ex­plained on a more se­ri­ous note.  “Some­times in car­ry­ing out our pub­lic du­ties, you meet peo­ple.  As you know, I was in Ch­agua­nas and some­times peo­ple want to hug you and kiss you and do all kinds of things and in the flow, you do get car­ried away, but some­times you need some­one like the Prime Min­is­ter to pull you back. So, a lot of us have to relook our hol­i­day plans and East­er plans and so on. Every­body bat­ting in their crease like the West In­dies team did yes­ter­day."

Mean­while, Al-Rawi dis­missed calls for his res­ig­na­tion from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said in oth­er coun­tries politi­cians who flout­ed COVID-19 pro­to­cols have re­signed.

"Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar has had a pas­sion for me for 11 years now.  It's not the first time you would hear Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar talk about me," he said.

He ex­pressed re­gret over the in­ci­dent and ad­mit­ted that they should have worn masks.

"There is a ma­te­r­i­al dif­fer­ence be­tween be­ing in a pri­vate event and a pub­lic event.  At that char­i­ty event, it was at the home of Voice, it was in a room where you could count eight peo­ple max.  We had en­gaged in Pro­to­col but on re­flec­tion, be­cause we were tele­vis­ing, we coul­da worn a mask. I have al­ready pub­licly said I could have tak­en the vol­un­tary step in a pri­vate res­i­dence to do that," the AG said.

He ac­cused Per­sad Bisses­sar of cre­at­ing dra­ma.

"At the end of the day I have al­ready said to the pop­u­la­tion I should have worn a mask in a pri­vate set­ting.  And all of us know that it's true.  All of us could tell tales of be­ing with fam­i­lies, or oth­er set­tings or in a dif­fer­ent place.  At the end of the day, I ex­pect Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar to say noth­ing good about me. It's been that way for 11 years."

On Thurs­day night, Al-Rawi at­tend­ed the sea­son two fi­nale of a live game show se­ries called Vibes with Voicey. The event was held at the home of So­ca star Voice (Aaron St Louis). The show is usu­al­ly streamed live on In­sta­gram at 9.30 pm each Thurs­day and at­tract­ed 13,000 views on the night. Supt Roger Alexan­der of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, a co-host of the Be­yond the Tape po­lice pro­gramme, ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty An­cil "Blaze" Isaac, and "celebri­ty body­guard' Kevin Da Cos­ta (known as John­ny Bra­vo) were in a room com­pet­ing in var­i­ous chal­lenges, in­clud­ing arm wrestling.

Even though hand san­i­ti­za­tion was done, none of the men wore masks and nor did they prac­tise so­cial dis­tanc­ing.