An­na-Lisa Paul

One week af­ter par­tic­i­pants were tear-gassed by po­lice dur­ing a march at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, The First Wave Move­ment (TFWM) led by Umar Ab­dul­lah yes­ter­day host­ed an­oth­er march with a no­tice­ably small­er crowd and a more in­tense po­lice pres­ence.

There were few­er than 100 par­tic­i­pants at the start of the march at 2.10 pm and the crowd grew slight­ly as the three-hour walk con­tin­ued.

The in­ci­dent-free event was host­ed un­der the ban­ner of The World­wide Ral­ly to Free­dom.

Speak­ing with re­porters be­fore the start of the march, Ab­dul­lah said: “We are in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the rest of the world as every coun­try is suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of these lock-downs and man­dates. Gov­ern­ments all over the world have tak­en a turn and they are do­ing things that are very sur­pris­ing to the pop­u­la­tion.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, here in T&T, we are notic­ing and wit­ness­ing a lot of is­sues in our sys­tems, and we are hop­ing that by com­ing out like this and walk­ing, is a sig­nif­i­cant ex­am­ple of what free­dom is all about.”

Ab­dul­lah was grant­ed per­mis­sion by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob to host the sym­bol­ic event which end­ed at 5 pm.

Com­mend­ing the or­gan­is­ers and par­tic­i­pants for obey­ing the law and the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, Ja­cob said yes­ter­day was a per­fect ex­am­ple of what can be achieved when cit­i­zens work with law en­force­ment.

“When per­sons work hand in hand with the law, they can get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­er­cise free­dom of ex­pres­sion with­out be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed,” he said

Ja­cob com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers in­volved in the ex­er­cise, some of whom had been re­called from leave to as­sist in main­tain­ing law and or­der. He de­scribed the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween of­fi­cers and par­tic­i­pants as pos­i­tive, dis­ci­plined and co­op­er­a­tive.

Asked about the mes­sage they want­ed to send to the au­thor­i­ties fol­low­ing the march, Ab­dul­lah said: “We want to show our gov­ern­ment that we are dis­sat­is­fied. We do not want you out of pow­er but we want you to lis­ten to the peo­ple. We want you to un­der­stand what we are say­ing.”

He said is­sues were af­fect­ing var­i­ous sec­tors in­clud­ing health, ed­u­ca­tion, and the econ­o­my since the pan­dem­ic be­gan which had led to more than 1,000 busi­ness­es hav­ing to close.

“You are hurt­ing the econ­o­my. You are hurt­ing our homes and our fam­i­lies are suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of this,” he said, call­ing for an­swers and trans­paren­cy from the gov­ern­ment.

Ab­dul­lah stressed that the de­ci­sion to be vac­ci­nat­ed re­mains a per­son­al choice and was crit­i­cal of the pub­lic sec­tor vac­cine pol­i­cy an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“Our im­me­di­ate thought is that the Prime Min­is­ter ex­tend­ed this be­cause he want­ed more time for the num­bers to go up be­cause they are not where he wants it,” he said.

Claim­ing this was yet an­oth­er at­tempt to co­erce peo­ple to take the vac­cine, Ab­dul­lah said: “No­body is tak­ing this in­jec­tion any­more. Those who would have tak­en it have stopped. They are not tak­ing the sec­ond shot, they are not tak­ing the boost­er. You have to an­swer why this is hap­pen­ing and why peo­ple are hes­i­tant.”

Leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion and mem­ber of the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen, Fuad Abu Bakr, who turned up to lend sup­port to Ab­dul­lah agreed that the vac­ci­na­tion re­mained a right of choice.

“In a sit­u­a­tion like this when a hu­man be­ing has to de­cide what he is go­ing to put in his body, he should have that choice,” he said.

He ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of adopt­ing a dra­con­ian ap­proach by or­der­ing pub­lic ser­vants to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed or not be paid.