Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The PNM and UNC sides were abuzz with "talk" on Wednes­day night, af­ter UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al used ob­scene lan­guage in the Par­lia­ment's tea­room, fol­low­ing a ver­bal at­tack on her by a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor in ear­li­er Sen­ate de­bate.

In the Sen­ate on Wednes­day, Lutch­me­di­al - in de­bate on the bill to val­i­date coun­cil­lors' ac­tions af­ter De­cem­ber 2022 - had slammed Gov­ern­ment on is­sues con­cern­ing the re­cent Privy Coun­cil judg­ment against ex­ten­sion of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment term.

PNM Sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, speak­ing af­ter Lutch­me­di­al, said, "Sen­a­tor Lutch­me­di­al, through­out the length and breadth of her pre­sen­ta­tion, she kept say­ing she's 'as­tound­ed and con­fused' and I be­lieve the Sen­a­tor ...

"I be­lieve the Sen­a­tor is in­deed 'as­tound­ed' and she's 'con­fused' be­cause ap­par­ent­ly for a sec­ond she thought this was 'spread paal with Mooni­lal' and this was not the Sen­ate!" Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal added.

UNC Sen­a­tors protest­ed so much against her re­mark be­ing "out of place" that Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent Muham­mad Ibrahim had to call for or­der at length, stern­ly warn­ing UNC Sen­a­tor David Nakhid.

Ibrahim said de­bate was veer­ing down a very emo­tion­al path­way and he asked every­one to tem­per their com­ments and abide by the Stand­ing Or­ders, which re­quires them to speak and be­have as sen­a­tors.

Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal con­tin­ued speak­ing, dis­miss­ing Lutch­me­di­al's oth­er points on the bill.

Wit­ness­es claimed Lutch­me­di­al lat­er went to the Par­lia­ment’s tea­room, where some Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing Ndale Young, were sit­ting and ob­scene lan­guage was used by Lutch­me­di­al in a re­buff when one PNM Min­is­ter of­fered her a piece of cake. Young said he told her she shouldn't use that type of lan­guage.

"But she said she didn't care," he added.

Young, ex­press­ing con­cern that ob­scene lan­guage was used, said, “Notwith­stand­ing the cut and thrust of the pol­i­tics in the cham­ber, we ought to hold our­selves to high stan­dards. I in­di­cat­ed that to UNC Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John, to whom I spoke about the is­sue. We have to main­tain a lev­el of couth even if we don’t like what we see or hear."

Lutch­me­di­al didn't com­ment on the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day. But her Face­book site car­ried the fol­low­ing post: "You can take the rat out of the gut­ter but can't take the gut­ter out of the rat. When peo­ple lack sub­stance and the in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty to speak on is­sues they re­sort to per­son­al at­tacks."

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the UNC Women's Arm de­nounced what it called the ab­hor­rent re­marks made by Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal dur­ing the Sen­ate pro­ceed­ings.

"This de­plorable in­ci­dent not on­ly fla­grant­ly un­der­mines the prin­ci­ples of re­spect and dig­ni­ty but al­so serves as a stark re­minder of the press­ing need for un­wa­ver­ing sup­port and recog­ni­tion for young women in pol­i­tics," it said.

It said af­ter Lutch­me­di­al di­min­ished the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment speak­ers with her in-depth knowl­edge of the law, Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal re­sort­ed to de­spi­ca­ble per­son­al at­tacks, shame­less­ly stoop­ing to the low­est depths imag­in­able for a woman in pol­i­tics.

"The UNC Women's Arm firm­ly up­holds that the vi­tal role of women in pol­i­tics should be ex­alt­ed and vig­or­ous­ly cham­pi­oned. It is both dis­heart­en­ing and in­fu­ri­at­ing to wit­ness a young woman in a po­si­tion of pow­er ex­ploit her plat­form to prop­a­gate hate and bit­ter­ness, while cal­lous­ly dis­re­spect­ing the rich his­to­ry and cul­tur­al her­itage of an eth­nic group with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Such rep­re­hen­si­ble be­hav­iour not on­ly un­der­mines the cher­ished val­ues of in­clu­siv­i­ty and di­ver­si­ty but al­so tar­nish­es the very fab­ric of uni­ty that ought to be fos­tered with­in our so­ci­ety."