Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James says Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s racial­ly-tinged at­tack against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will un­doubt­ed­ly have reper­cus­sions dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, James said he had viewed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech and heard, “Black man on the oth­er side.”

“I don’t know about the blank part of it, the video I lis­tened to, says black,” he said in a phone in­ter­view.

Say­ing that in­fer­ences still have to be made as to who the “black man might be”, James said there are log­i­cal sus­pi­cions who “he” might be, giv­en that politi­cians tend to speak in code.

“Is she be­ing racist? That’s the ques­tion that aris­es when she said “the black man’,” James said.

Asked if he felt whether the word said was black or blank would have an im­pact on the up­com­ing elec­tion, James said all things have im­pacts.

“In this volatile sea­son where things are very flu­id, right, where peo­ple ei­ther con­firm their at­ti­tudes to­wards po­lit­i­cal lead­ers or they get greater clar­i­ty in who they should sup­port, all fac­tors will have to be con­sid­ered,” he said.

He said one of the pos­si­ble re­ac­tions to what Per­sad-Bisses­sar said could be a loss of sup­port.

How­ev­er, he said this was un­like­ly to af­fect the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ core vot­ers, who may be hard­ened and re­in­forced in their de­sire to de­fend her.

“If she, as she must do, hopes to win over peo­ple, not part of her core, then she’s like­ly to have lost them and alien­at­ed them more than they are al­ready alien­at­ed. I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who vote the PNM, and who she needs to win over,” he said.