DA­REECE PO­LO &

JENSEN LA VENDE

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House, Bar­ry Padarath, says the Prime Min­is­ter stood up for her­self and oth­ers when she told Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert, “I’ll cuff you down.”

He said, as such, there would be no apol­o­gy from the Prime Min­is­ter or any­one on the Gov­ern­ment bench who had en­dured years of “un­war­rant­ed at­tacks” from mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Padarath’s stance came on the same day Im­bert, the Diego Mar­tin North/East Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of threat­en­ing phys­i­cal vi­o­lence in Par­lia­ment. He added her com­ment was not Par­lia­men­tary ban­ter but “a state­ment of in­tent to be vi­o­lent.” How­ev­er, Im­bert stopped short of say­ing what ac­tion, if any, he was go­ing to take.

In a brief but sharp ex­change dur­ing the sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told him, “Don’t point at me.” Im­bert replied, “Why not?” prompt­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to re­spond, “Be­cause I’ll cuff you down.”

Post­ing on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, yes­ter­day, Im­bert ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of cross­ing a dan­ger­ous line. “The PM, who is the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, threat­ened phys­i­cal as­sault in Par­lia­ment. This did not ap­pear to be ban­ter, but rather, a state­ment of in­tent to be vi­o­lent, from the per­son re­spon­si­ble for an­ti-crime pol­i­cy in T&T. Where are we go­ing?”

His crit­i­cisms came as the PNM Women’s League al­so con­demned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­duct, de­scrib­ing it in a Sat­ur­day press re­lease as “high­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate, deeply trou­bling, and whol­ly un­be­com­ing of the hold­er of the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter.” The league ques­tioned the ex­am­ple set for young peo­ple, ask­ing, “How can you speak to the na­tion’s youth about non-vi­o­lence, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, and re­spect when your own lan­guage in Par­lia­ment pro­motes the op­po­site? How can you ex­pect cit­i­zens to up­hold ci­vil­i­ty when your own con­duct falls short of the dig­ni­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of your of­fice?”

How­ev­er, Padarath, who is al­so Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, said the pub­lic is not aware of the “po­lit­i­cal mo­lesta­tion” the UNC Gov­ern­ment faces from the Op­po­si­tion. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, he said the Prime Min­is­ter stood up for her­self and oth­ers who, he said, were den­i­grat­ed by the PNM.

“We went through the most dis­gust­ing and most vile at­tacks, my­self in­clud­ed, by Colm Im­bert and oth­ers. Where was the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Women’s League then? Where were the cries of civ­il so­ci­ety then, when very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions were made against mem­bers of the then-op­po­si­tion UNC? Un­war­rant­ed at­tacks in the most dis­gust­ing way, and there­fore there will be no apol­o­gy forth­com­ing, or rather, there should be no apol­o­gy forth­com­ing be­cause every­one in the coun­try knows that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar meant po­lit­i­cal­ly she would deal with Mr Im­bert.”

Padarath ex­plained that on Fri­day, Im­bert kept taunt­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, who had no choice but to de­fend her­self. He added that the Op­po­si­tion can take what­ev­er av­enues deemed nec­es­sary in seek­ing re­dress, but an apol­o­gy will not be forth­com­ing.

“We will make no apolo­gies, ab­solute­ly no apol­o­gy, for clap­ping back and putting them in their place, as we see in lo­cal par­lance, be­cause we have en­dured that for far too long. They have to un­der­stand the pa­ra­me­ters in which we op­er­ate, and there­fore, if they want to be good ex­em­plars to the chil­dren and cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, they have to do bet­ter. Sit­ting down and sim­ply say­ing noth­ing while we con­tin­ue to be bul­lied in­side and out­side of Gov­ern­ment is no longer an op­tion,” he de­clared.

Mean­while, the UNC Women’s Arm is­sued a swift and sharply word­ed re­sponse yes­ter­day, ac­cus­ing the PNM’s women’s group of mis­rep­re­sent­ing the in­ci­dent and adopt­ing a “re­gres­sive” and “mis­lead­ing” stance. They in­sist­ed that video footage of the ex­change clear­ly sup­ports their po­si­tion, stat­ing: “The video speaks for it­self—MP Colm Im­bert ag­gres­sive­ly point­ed his fin­gers at the Prime Min­is­ter … rather than re­flect on his con­duct, Im­bert es­ca­lat­ed the con­fronta­tion with the threat­en­ing re­tort: ‘or what’.”

They went fur­ther, ac­cus­ing the PNM Women’s League of sid­ing with “a male ag­gres­sor” in a mo­ment they de­scribed as in­tim­i­dat­ing and hos­tile. “MP Colm Im­bert ag­gres­sive­ly point­ed his fin­gers at the Prime Min­is­ter—a dis­re­spect­ful, in­tim­i­dat­ing and hos­tile ges­ture … In­stead of de­fend­ing a woman faced with bla­tant in­tim­i­da­tion, the PNM Women’s League chose to: − Mis­rep­re­sent the Prime Min­is­ter’s words − Re­cast the ag­gres­sor as the vic­tim − Shame and at­tack the woman tar­get­ed by the ag­gres­sion.”

The PNM Women’s League has not re­spond­ed to the UNC’s counter-state­ment, and Im­bert has not in­di­cat­ed whether he in­tends to pur­sue fur­ther ac­tion.