RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­scribed as strange a call by Nizam Mo­hammed for Mus­lims to with­hold their vote in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who took part in a UNC mo­tor­cade in Pe­nal yes­ter­day, said: “I think every per­son has their own choice to make and it is strange that he would ask that they with­hold their vote when for the past how many years his voice was silent. I do not want to say any­thing bad about him, he’s a great man.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was her pub­lic ap­peal for the re­turn of T&T na­tion­als strand­ed in Syr­ia that led to the for­ma­tion of the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee chaired by Mo­hammed, so she found it strange that he is now ask­ing Mus­lims to with­hold their votes.

“You vote for the UNC, we will fix it,” she said.

Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, pres­i­dent of the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild, said: “It is shock­ing and ab­surd of Nizam Mo­hammed to call on the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to boy­cott the Gen­er­al elec­tion on the 28th April 2025.”

He added: “Mo­hammed when ap­point­ed chair­man of the repa­tri­a­tion com­mit­tee over two years ago, should have known he was be­ing used as a po­lit­i­cal pawn. Kwe­si At­i­ba is al­so a sup­port­er of the PNM.”

Not­ing that le­gal and hu­man­i­tar­i­an sup­port for repa­tri­a­tion was al­ready in place, Mo­hammed said: “Fam­i­lies of the de­tainees in Syr­ia had their lawyers lo­cal­ly plus hu­man rights in­ter­na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­tee of the Red Cross were ready to ad­vise and pro­vide the nec­es­sary guid­ance and as­sis­tance for the re­turn of our cit­i­zens.

“The gov­ern­ment has on more than one oc­ca­sion made sil­ly ex­cus­es for not al­low­ing the re­turn of the women and chil­dren de­tained in Syr­ia. There was ab­solute­ly no need for this repa­tri­a­tion com­mit­tee.”

Shar­ing his per­son­al opin­ion, he said: “Based on what I know and ob­served in this mat­ter, the gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion of al­low­ing the re­turn of our cit­i­zens. Every stalling tac­tic was be­ing used up to to­day, to pre­vent the re­turn of our broth­ers and sis­ters to Trinidad.”

He end­ed with a call to ac­tion: “Mus­lims, go and vote this gov­ern­ment out of of­fice on the 28th April 2025 and don’t let them use us Mus­lims as pawns as they did to Nizam Mo­hammed.”