Sascha Wil­son

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she is un­aware of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tise­ments caus­ing a racial furore on so­cial me­dia and in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment camp.

At a vir­tu­al Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at San­gre Grande on Thurs­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the ad­ver­tise­ments de­grad­ed Afro-Trinida­di­ans by fea­tur­ing them as be­ing des­ti­tute and de­mand­ed that they be re­moved from cir­cu­la­tion. He ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of abus­ing black peo­ple “in the most dis­gust­ing and dis­grace­ful way.”

But when asked about the ads be­fore the start of a UNC mo­tor­cade at South Park yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I don’t know which ad you are speak­ing about ma’am.”

Told that one of the ad­ver­tise­ments was of a girl beg­ging for as­sis­tance and be­ing giv­en ba­nanas, she said, “To my knowl­edge that is not the UNC ad, so I don’t know what ads you are speak­ing about.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she has seen some of the UNC ads but not all of them.

“Yes, I have seen many of the UNC ads but this par­tic­u­lar one, look sev­er­al of them I have not seen be­cause I have been on the cam­paign trail.”

Asked whether she would be re­view­ing the ad­ver­tise­ments, she said the team re­spon­si­ble for com­mu­ni­ca­tions may re­view them. How­ev­er, she ac­cused the Row­ley-led PNM of us­ing dis­trac­tion tac­tics to take away from the re­al is­sues fac­ing peo­ple.

“You know we have two more days to go. We are on the eve of the elec­tion again, I make the point that the Row­ley par­ty is very des­per­ate. I think they are smelling it that they are go­ing to lose the elec­tions and there­fore sing any­thing they can to take dis­trac­tions ways from the re­al is­sue the bread and but­ter is­sues of help­ing peo­ple,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“They fail to pro­vide any plan as to how they will help peo­ple, as to how they will gov­ern the coun­try over the next five years.”

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she did not think the con­tro­ver­sy over the ad­ver­tise­ments would neg­a­tive­ly im­pact their cam­paign. She said the over­whelm­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try was over the poor per­for­mance of the Row­ley par­ty and peo­ple had made up their minds to vote them out.

Al­so re­spond­ing to PNM claims that they were try­ing to bribe peo­ple to vote by giv­ing them fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “To­tal non­sense in my re­spect­ful view.”

She said the PNM start­ed off with false claims that the UNC was giv­ing peo­ple old one hun­dred dol­lar notes.

“And now they talk­ing about stoves and fridges and so on. I know Jear­lean John in the flood­ing want­ed to help peo­ple be­cause of flood­ing. It was not a bribe to buy votes. It is not the first time we have helped peo­ple who have been dev­as­tat­ed by floods.”

How­ev­er, she al­leged that in Moru­ga/Table­land the PNM, thor­ough its HDC op­er­a­tives, are giv­ing out ap­pli­ances to res­i­dents. Warn­ing that it is il­le­gal to try to se­cure votes with items whether it be mon­ey or ap­pli­ances, she said such ac­tiv­i­ties are con­sid­ered elec­tion of­fences and should be re­port­ed to the po­lice.

“It is not a ques­tion of just stand­ing on a plat­form and mak­ing wild al­le­ga­tions, you need to make your re­ports to the po­lice and have it dealt with as a mat­ter of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty and elec­tion of­fence.”

She, how­ev­er, de­clined to com­ment on Jus­tice James Aboud find­ing that there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the civ­il mat­ter brought by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) against Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and five con­trac­tors to go to tri­al, say­ing it is still sub-ju­dice.