SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter he was fol­lowed, in­tim­i­dat­ed and cursed by three men at the Tu­na­puna mar­ket for wear­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) jer­sey, pen­sion­er Claude Forde is stand­ing his ground.

The 82-year-old man has vowed to con­tin­ue sport­ing his PNM jer­sey with pride, stat­ing that the coun­try’s longest-serv­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty has done a lot we should be proud of.

The in­ci­dent hap­pened on Christ­mas Eve.

Forde had at­tend­ed a church func­tion wear­ing the PNM jer­sey.

“The mem­bers would nor­mal­ly wear a red jer­sey for our church func­tions. But I used a waist­coat to cov­er the PNM’s em­blem,” he said.

Af­ter the event, Forde re­moved the waist­coat and went to the mar­ket to ex­tend Christ­mas greet­ings to his butch­er friends. The long-stand­ing PNM mem­ber said he was fol­lowed by three men who be­gan to in­tim­i­date him.

One of the men be­gan hurl­ing ob­scen­i­ties and video­tap­ing him while show­ing emp­ty stalls in the mar­ket.

“They kept say­ing that Row­ley have the place hard, look how the place emp­ty,” he said re­fer­ring to the stalls that had no cus­tomers.

“They kept say­ing peo­ple were suf­fer­ing.”

A voice in the video stat­ed that peo­ple could not even buy goods un­der the PNM and ad­vised Forde to take off his PNM jer­sey and walk on it, as they were sup­port­ing “Aun­ty Kam­la all the way.”

Forde said he was called “a slave of Dr Row­ley” and the men threat­ened to beat him.

A video of Forde be­ing ver­bal­ly abused and ridiculed sur­faced on Tik­Tok hours lat­er un­der an ac­count cre­ator named “Shak­star 296.”

In a press re­lease, the PNM’s Women’s League con­demned the ac­tions in the video, stat­ing it was un­ac­cept­able and a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“The spread of such con­tent not on­ly tar­nish­es the in­di­vid­ual’s rep­u­ta­tion but al­so deep­ens so­cial di­vi­sion,” the group said.

In an in­ter­view at the mar­ket yes­ter­day, Forde said he would not be in­tim­i­dat­ed and if op­pos­ing par­ties “had to do that to win an elec­tion, heav­en knows.”

Forde said he was born in the PNM and will re­main a par­ty loy­al­ist.

“I have my rights. I live in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try. I does feel proud to wear my jer­sey. So great is the PNM. I don’t care who vex,” he said.

Pressed about the mur­der rate reach­ing its high­est lev­el un­der the PNM, Forde said crime has been com­ing from all an­gles.

“The crime is every­body’s busi­ness and they have to get to­geth­er to fight this crime.”

Forde said he was un­sure if the men would re­turn to harm him.

“I don’t know. I just stay­ing in my house,” he said.

He has re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice.

“The po­lice told me they can’t do any­thing be­cause no in­jury was done,” he said.