Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is now em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy over racial­ly charged re­marks made by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Al­der­man Su­san Hold­er dur­ing a statu­to­ry meet­ing last week.

The state­ment Hold­er made dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion was record­ed, a copy of which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia.

In the au­dio, Hold­er is heard say­ing, “And I ob­served the PNM mem­bers of coun­cil, when they don’t have their way, they de­cide to get on like some id­iots in here, Mr Chair­man, I heard the CEO say to­day about all yuh be­hav­iour, why when the PNM mem­bers of the coun­cil con­duct­ing them­selves in a dis­grace­ful, dis­taste­ful and old ni$%a, gut­ter rat type of way, they don’t come out and tell them these things. We are on­ly stand­ing up for what is right chair­man.”

Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am is then heard cau­tion­ing Hold­er.

Oth­er coun­cil­lors are then heard in the back­ground cheer­ing on the al­der­man, then PNM coun­cil­lor Si­mone Gill is heard ask­ing Hold­er to re­peat or clar­i­fy her state­ment so that it would be on the record.

Hold­er con­tin­ued, “I ain’t call no­body name, they can say what they want and I can say what I want to if the law­suit come, I am tak­ing that too and I know how to do that too, I good at that, me ain’t afraid of none of them. “I no­ticed the con­duct of PNM mem­bers of coun­cil and I ain’t go tol­er­ate none of that from none of them, they go be sur­prise in here the next day they mash meh corn, they would be in for sur­pris­es so pre­pare for it. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar came here as a Prime Min­is­ter and the per­for­mance of that woman and in five years what that woman do what the PNM did for 15 years.”

Chair­man Juter­am yes­ter­day con­firmed the racial­ly charged lan­guage was used by Hold­er, not­ing he did not con­done it.

“Those types of com­ments made from what side of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide, as an in­di­vid­ual, I am not in sup­port of those types of com­ments,” he said.

“I am a proud Trin­bag­on­ian and I stand with every creed and race find an equal place and those types of com­ments are in­hu­mane, very in­sen­si­tive and cal­lous in terms of when we live in a po­larised so­ci­ety and we should not try to de­scribe in­di­vid­u­als with any deroga­to­ry names at­tached to them and it leaves a lot to be de­sired for the younger ones to come in­to the po­lit­i­cal are­na and it leaves a lot to what type of cul­ture we are try­ing to show­case and those com­ments are un­be­com­ing and it is worse than third world be­hav­iour.”

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Hold­er con­firmed she made the state­ment and even used it again dur­ing the in­ter­view.

“We had a mis­un­der­stand­ing with a pro­pos­al that I brought to the coun­cil ta­ble and the PNM mem­bers of coun­cil car­ry on them­selves in a dis­taste­ful man­ner, so dur­ing my con­tri­bu­tion to the statu­to­ry meet­ing, I spoke about the be­hav­iour of PNM mem­bers of coun­cil, that their con­duct is very class­less, very dis­taste­ful and they con­duct them­selves in an old ni@%$ man­ner, that is what I said. I did not call any­one of them an old ni@%$, I said that they con­duct them­selves in an old ni@%$ man­ner,” she said.

Asked whether the word she used was in­ap­pro­pri­ate for the coun­cil, she said, “Some peo­ple may think that, but that is a term be­ing used when you con­duct your­self in a class­less man­ner.”

On whether she would re­tract her state­ments, Hold­er said, “I will have to think about it be­cause any­time I would have to re­tract my state­ment, there are state­ments that the PNM coun­cil­lors use dur­ing the fi­nance meet­ing that they would have to re­tract.”

PNM wants her re­moved by Kam­la

To­co/Va­len­cia East coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don yes­ter­day called on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress lead­er­ship to re­move Hold­er from the coun­cil.

“I am touched in a bad way by the re­marks made by Al­der­man Su­san Hold­er at that meet­ing and I am call­ing for her im­me­di­ate re­moval, Ron­don told Guardian Me­dia.

“I can­not sit down in a coun­cil and watch some­one who is talk­ing down to peo­ple mak­ing peo­ple un­com­fort­able and her com­ments of­fend­ed per­sons of colour at the meet­ing and to make mat­ters worse, there were oth­er UNC coun­cil­lors clap­ping and laugh­ing when the state­ment was made. That is not nice and I am call­ing that Mrs Kam­la Bisses­sar and the UNC do some­thing now about Su­san Hold­er.”

The PNM coun­cil­lors al­so said chair­man Juter­am did not do enough at the meet­ing.

Va­len­cia West coun­cil­lor Si­mone Gill said, “We are al­so ask­ing for some­thing to be done about the fact that the chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Anil Juter­am, ex­e­cut­ed an in­ept and in­ad­e­quate at­tempt to cau­tion the al­der­man when at his dis­pos­al, he could have asked her to with­draw or to leave the cham­ber, or to cease and de­sist from her state­ment, or to have her seat or even to call the con­tri­bu­tion to an end and he re­fused bla­tant­ly when it was brought to his at­ten­tion that mem­bers were ques­tion­ing the state­ment that was said. We ask the chair­man to hold her to ac­count for what she said and his re­sponse was I cau­tioned her and that is not a valid an­swer or re­sponse to that racial­ly charged and dis­grace­ful state­ment that was made and it is not some­thing that we ac­cept at the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.”

The PNM coun­cil­lors are card­ed to raise a mo­tion to re­move Hold­er from com­mit­tees at the next statu­to­ry meet­ing.