KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

“I am a loy­al, faith­ful per­son,” was the re­sponse Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein gave when asked about spec­u­la­tion that he could be “go­ing home” to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Dur­ing the Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Rio Claro, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar cleared the air that it was not Ho­sein who leaked the Cab­i­net note ap­prov­ing the $23 mil­lion con­tract for the rental of a build­ing owned by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi’s fam­i­ly.

“By the way, I un­der­stand they (Gov­ern­ment) re­al bru­talise some peo­ple last week af­ter I read out the Cab­i­net note on this mat­ter. And they re­al­ly bru­talised a poor fel­la. I hear he cry­ing all about, one of the min­is­ters be­cause they’re telling that min­is­ter, ‘Aye! You are the one that gave Kam­la that Cab note.’

“No, it was not Kaz­im. You did not give me that Cab­i­net Note. It was not Kaz­im, ok!. It was not Kaz­im so leave him alone. Leave him alone, he will come home. It was not Kaz­im,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said at the Rio Claro East Sec­ondary School.

Asked to re­spond yes­ter­day, Ho­sein said that be­ing loy­al was an im­por­tant part of his Is­lam­ic faith so he would not leak a doc­u­ment to any­one. Ho­sein had just fin­ished speak­ing to re­cruits who were in­duct­ed in­to train­ing for the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice.

“I was brought up like that, my re­li­gion spec­i­fies that and I will not go against any­body I am loy­al to, and I will not leak a doc­u­ment to any­one. I mean, that is un­eth­i­cal and I am here to serve. I was asked by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try, whom I have the ut­most re­spect for, to serve and I am serv­ing. I would not leak a doc­u­ment. I would not do that,” Ho­sein said.

Stress­ing that he was a “sec­ond gen­er­a­tion PNM”, he re­mind­ed all that his fa­ther, Ra­keeb Ho­sein was a found­ing mem­ber of the par­ty and a for­mer may­or of San Fer­nan­do.

He al­so re­called his ear­ly days, clean­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning’s con­stituen­cy of­fice. Ho­sein worked in the San Fer­nan­do Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, where he lat­er be­came a coun­cil­lor and be­fore as­sum­ing his place in the Cab­i­net, was the may­or of San Fer­nan­do.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s rev­e­la­tion was the first he heard that he was linked to the leaked doc­u­ment or “com­ing home”. How­ev­er, he warned that with elec­tions near­ing, peo­ple will hear many dif­fer­ent things.

“I am a very hum­ble, qui­et per­son. I am not al­ways in the lime­light, but prob­a­bly they want to make me pop­u­lar. I don’t see my­self as that type of per­son. I nev­er asked for any po­si­tion any­where. It was of­fered to me and I ac­cept­ed it and as I said, I am here to serve.”