Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee chair­man Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da says she left shocked af­ter Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine la­belled Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley a “house slave” af­ter the de­feat of the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills on Mon­day.

Uzoma-Wada­da said she’s dis­ap­point­ed to again have to call on the coun­try’s lead­ers to act re­spon­si­bly. She said Au­gus­tine must be con­scious of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of African cul­ture and his­to­ry, what is deemed ac­cept­able, and the po­ten­tial im­pact on so­ci­ety.

Af­ter the bills’ fail­ure on Mon­day, Au­gus­tine took to Face­book, say­ing, “Noth­ing is worse than when your rel­a­tive, who sits in the seat of pow­er, is noth­ing but a house slave who ig­nores the re­al dreams and as­pi­ra­tions of those he left be­hind in the field in To­ba­go.”

He hash­tagged “house slave men­tal­i­ty” and “wicked prime min­is­ter”.

But Uzoma-Wada­da not­ed that even if lead­ers’ re­spons­es come from an emo­tion­al space, due dili­gence is nec­es­sary.

“I think our lead­ers have to con­tin­ue to be very re­spon­si­ble and most of all have that cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Some­times, a lot of the things we are say­ing, we are not con­scious. We don’t even re­fer to our­selves as slaves any­more. We talk about be­ing en­slaved per­sons,” she said.

“When lead­ers speak, they need to be re­spon­si­ble. Some­times, they speak from a place of anger or emo­tions, and they don’t al­ways think about how their words af­fect oth­ers... Once you say some­thing, you can’t take it back.”

She said lead­ers should think about the his­to­ry of the peo­ple they’re talk­ing to and be mind­ful of how their words make so­ci­ety feel.

“We need to re­mem­ber where we came from and un­der­stand how words can hurt or help,” Uzoma-Wada­da said, be­fore ex­plain­ing, “We don’t say ‘slaves’ any­more. We say ‘en­slaved per­sons’ be­cause it shows more re­spect.”

“Be­fore talk­ing to the pub­lic, lead­ers should think care­ful­ly about what they’re go­ing to say. They can’t let anger or emo­tions guide them. They need to be calm and clear so peo­ple un­der­stand their mes­sage.”

She said Au­gus­tine’s mes­sage for greater au­ton­o­my was over­shad­owed and lost in the in­sult.

“Some­times, all any­one talks about is one word or phrase the leader used, and the re­al mes­sage is lost.”

She sent not on­ly Au­gus­tine but all politi­cians a sim­ple re­minder: “When lead­ers speak, their words should bring peo­ple to­geth­er, not push them apart.”

In de­fence of Row­ley, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis ac­cused Au­gus­tine of be­ing dis­re­spect­ful and un­pro­duc­tive. He said Au­gus­tine on­ly fo­cus­es on in­sults in­stead of mak­ing mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions.

And while he’s not sur­prised by the com­ments, he had one ques­tion for Au­gus­tine, “Who is re­al­ly the house slave, or who re­al­ly has a house slave men­tal­i­ty, and who is re­al­ly wicked?”

Com­par­ing Au­gus­tine’s per­for­mance and gov­er­nance style to that of Row­ley’s, Den­nis asked the pub­lic to let re­sults speak loud­er than in­sults.

“It is to­tal­ly iron­ic that the man who has sin­gle-hand­ed­ly sold out To­ba­go... just imag­ine, all ma­jor con­tracts for the last three years have gone to com­pa­nies out­side of To­ba­go from an ad­min­is­tra­tion that promised to do ex­act­ly the op­po­site by putting To­bag­o­ni­ans first. Check it, all ma­jor con­tracts, have gone to com­pa­nies out­side of To­ba­go. He has re­fused to pay his own To­ba­go-based con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers. Who is re­al­ly the house slave? Who re­al­ly has a house slave men­tal­i­ty, and who is re­al­ly wicked? Let’s ex­am­ine the facts. Let’s move be­yond emo­tion­al fool­ish­ness.”

Ref­er­enc­ing ma­jor projects like the new air­port ter­mi­nal, po­lice sta­tions and the Rox­bor­ough hos­pi­tal in high­light­ing the PM’s track record, Den­nis asked, “What has the chief sec­re­tary de­liv­ered to the peo­ple of To­ba­go in his­to­ry, more than pain and suf­fer­ing?”

He said, un­der Au­gus­tine’s regime, there were 2,000-plus jobs lost in the con­struc­tion sec­tor and over 300 re­trenched in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

“The tourism sec­tor and the cre­ative sec­tor, by ex­ten­sion, has been com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed. The agri­cul­ture sec­tor has been com­plete­ly de­mor­alised. The econ­o­my of To­ba­go has been com­plete­ly de­stroyed in three short years. But the Chief Sec­re­tary wants to have a con­ver­sa­tion about who is wicked.”

Mean­while, To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man Mar­tin George felt the la­belling was un­nec­es­sary, adding he’s dis­ap­point­ed Au­gus­tine’s in­sult was adding to a grow­ing list of con­tro­ver­sial and of­fen­sive state­ments made by pub­lic of­fi­cials.

“There’s a cer­tain lev­el of ci­vil­i­ty, de­cen­cy, and gen­til­i­ty which ought to at­tend up­on our pub­lic com­ments, state­ments, and even our out­bursts,” George said.

“No mat­ter how irate or in­censed we may be at a sit­u­a­tion, we must al­ways tem­per our words with re­straint and a con­cern for all.”

He said dis­agree­ments do not have to turn in­to per­son­al at­tacks.

“We can agree to dis­agree with­out be­ing dis­agree­able,” he ex­plained.

“There are very nice ways you can ex­press your great­est dis­sent and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with­out be­com­ing so dan­ger­ous­ly dis­cor­dant and di­vi­sive in your state­ments.”

George al­so re­mind­ed politi­cians of their role as role mod­els for young peo­ple and chil­dren.

“The chil­dren of this na­tion, the school­child­ren, they are look­ing up at you for your ex­am­ple. And if this is what they see, then this is what they will learn.”

He called for re­flec­tion and re­straint, say­ing lead­ers must act re­spon­si­bly to have a more re­spect­ful and uni­fied so­ci­ety.

Ef­forts to get com­ments from Au­gus­tine and the PM were un­suc­cess­ful as ques­tions to them went unan­swered.