SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Hours af­ter crit­i­cis­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for fil­ing a mo­tion un­der Sec­tion 36 of the Con­sti­tu­tion for the es­tab­lish­ment of a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate and po­ten­tial­ly re­move Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes from of­fice over the po­lice com­mis­sion­er ap­point­ment im­broglio, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged women to stand up and sup­port their fe­male coun­ter­parts in­stead of bring­ing each oth­er down.

"Imag­ine we have to go to Par­lia­ment and we have to wait to be sum­moned by the Speak­er to go to the Par­lia­ment to try and give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lam­bast the Pres­i­dent. They are not con­tent with lam­bast­ing oth­ers who are avail­able to them in the po­lit­i­cal are­na. When all else fails in pol­i­tics you at­tack the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent and that will make you look big and bad."

This was Row­ley's sec­ond scathing at­tack on Per­sad-Bisses­sar as he ad­dressed a vir­tu­al Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in La Hor­quet­ta on Sat­ur­day night.

Ear­li­er in the day, Row­ley wad­ed in­to Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a press con­fer­ence at Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, for fil­ing the mo­tion against Weekes which he de­scribed as "ab­solute hog­wash."

"But I wait­ing for them to come to the Par­lia­ment with that fool­ish­ness. I wait­ing. And all the women in this coun­try must wait to find out from Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar why she is so dis­re­spect­ful to the Pres­i­dent of T&T who is al­so a woman. All of you must ask that ques­tion. You see be­cause ap­par­ent­ly, it's like some of them fel­las out­side there ...if I can't get you I go mash it up. If I can't get you I go kill you. I will mark your face with a knife... I go throw acid on you. That is what you are see­ing there," Row­ley said at the meet­ing which was at­tend­ed by Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat and Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings who al­so spoke.

Row­ley al­so raised is­sue with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's call­ing a press con­fer­ence last Fri­day "to say the Pres­i­dent...well she not sure if the Pres­i­dent has lost her men­tal fac­ul­ties but she get­ting there."

The PM viewed the Op­po­si­tion Leader's com­ments as be­ing out of place state­ment.

"But I ask you to dis­miss those things," the PM told sup­port­ers.