AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion Leader claims the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s and so­ci­ety’s han­dling of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing reeks of dou­ble stan­dards con­cern­ing gen­der roles. 

While stay­ing clear of pro­nounc­ing on the guilt or in­no­cence of the sen­a­tor re­gard­ing a pro­tec­tion or­der grant­ed against her, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, that the si­lence from the PNM, the me­dia and so­ci­ety is not a good look. 

“Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is com­mit­ted by both women and men. If this was a male politi­cian be­ing ac­cused of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in a court of law, the me­dia would have been in­un­dat­ed with calls for ac­tion against him. The com­men­ta­tors would have been rak­ing him over the coals,” the Op­po­si­tion Leader posit­ed. 

She added, “Women have equal rights as men and there­fore should un­der­stand they al­so have equal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as men.” 

A court or­der ob­tained by the me­dia shows an in­ter­im pro­tec­tion or­der grant­ed against Leza­ma-Lee Sing on Sep­tem­ber 19, af­ter her hus­band, Dar­ren Lee Sing, filed an ap­pli­ca­tion on Sep­tem­ber 11. 

Sen­a­tor Leza­ma-Lee Sing, in a le­gal let­ter to a so­cial me­dia blog­ger, stat­ed she was “not ca­pa­ble of such hor­ren­dous acts” adding that she was wait­ing for her day in court.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­frained from call­ing for the PNM to re­move its Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer say­ing that it is for her par­ty to de­cide. 

“As for her re­moval, that is for her, her leader and her par­ty to de­cide. She claims in­no­cence and has the right to ac­cess the court to clear her name, but the good and de­cent men in our coun­try are look­ing on at the dou­ble stan­dards on dis­play re­gard­ing this en­tire in­ci­dent,” she said. 

Guardian Me­dia sought to get re­spons­es on the sit­u­a­tion from se­nior PNM mem­bers. 

Dur­ing a screen­ing ex­er­cise of po­ten­tial can­di­dates at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day for the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, Moru­ga/Table­land and Fyz­abad con­stituen­cies, Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi was asked if the mat­ter was dis­cussed in­ter­nal­ly. 

“As a par­ty? The par­ty nev­er meets on things like that,” he re­spond­ed. 

How­ev­er, he added, “But I did see a re­port in the pa­pers that is im­por­tant to bear in mind. It was an ex parte in­junc­tion that was is­sued, that means one per­son went to court. What I not­ed on that is Leza­ma-Lee Sing and her at­tor­neys did not ap­pear, so I think it is pre­ma­ture to speak to any­thing at all. Any­thing that is sub-ju­dice ob­vi­ous­ly you have to let the courts speak.

“But the one thing that stood out to me is the fact that you had an ex-parte ap­pli­ca­tion mean­ing one per­son went to court, one at­tor­ney went to court, so let’s wait to see what hap­pens on that.” 

Mean­while, PNM La­dy Vice Chair, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is chose to stay clear of the is­sue en­tire­ly. 

“You know I am not go­ing to say any­thing, the Prime Min­is­ter is com­ing you want to ask him? I am not go­ing to say any­thing on that,” she said be­fore walk­ing in­to Bal­isi­er House’s com­pound. 

Al­so lend­ing their voice to the is­sue was the Pres­i­dent of the Fa­ther’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Na­tion­al Award win­ner, Rhon­dall Fee­les. 

“This does not mean that it is an im­me­di­ate fact that she is guilty, but this is the cul­ture that we have as a so­ci­ety where au­to­mat­i­cal­ly we see men as preda­tors and hard­ly ever see him as a vic­tim,” Fee­les ar­gued. 

He hoped that this would now be the cat­a­lyst for a na­tion­al sen­si­ti­sa­tion dri­ve to un­der­score that both men and women can seek the court’s pro­tec­tion.