Gail Alexan­der

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was put out of the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber yes­ter­day for re­fus­ing to with­draw his ac­cu­sa­tion that UNC MPs were mak­ing “racist” re­marks dur­ing de­lib­er­a­tions.

UNC MP Dave Tan­coo al­so slammed Young for call­ing him “boy”.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­so re­ceived re­peat­ed rep­ri­mands in Par­lia­ment when he con­tin­u­ous­ly “buffed” UNC MPs on To­ba­go is­sues.

The squalor took place dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) meet­ing where UNC MPs grilled Gov­ern­ment on 2021 al­lo­ca­tion sums for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) – and Im­bert, Young and min­is­ters went hard­line in re­ply­ing.

SFC chair­man, House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George was so taxed by the num­ber of rep­ri­mands she had to give, main­ly to Min­is­ter Young, that she or­dered a very brief time-out halfway through the meet­ing.

“Too much sug­ar! Maybe we all had a very good break­fast,“ An­nisette –George said not­ing sug­ar is­sues spike with carbs.

Im­bert was the first one to get riled by UNC prob­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly from heavy ques­tion­ing by the UNC’s Ravi Rati­ram who queried dif­fer­ences in sums for a range of ex­pen­di­ture from pro­grammes to em­ploy­ment. Im­bert back­hand­ed Rati­ram’s queries on in­creased ex­pens­es for THA head­counts. Im­bert in­sist­ed the fig­ures were the same for all the years Rati­ram queried.

Rati­ram al­so asked if cer­tain sums were in­creased for hir­ing due to up­com­ing THA elec­tions.

An­nisette-George had to ask the com­plain­ing Im­bert to give Rati­ram the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make his point to which Im­bert could re­ply.

Young raised the is­sue of in­ter­fer­ence by Gov­ern­ment in THA mat­ters, say­ing it wasn’t for THA to tell Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment how many work­ers it has. He went all the way back to To­ba­go’s Mil­shiv (land) mat­ter when he said the UNC didn’t want to take calls on that is­sue.

UNC’s Ani­ta Haynes ex­plained UNC wasn’t seek­ing to cause in­ter­fer­ence, but it was a mat­ter of ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Young coun­tered that she’d twist­ed his words. He al­so took of­fence to a com­ment by an­oth­er UNC MP that Im­bert “didn’t know how many posts there are.”

Vis­i­bly up­set Young fumed that UNC MPs didn’t cor­rect­ly say his “POS North St Ann’s West” des­ig­na­tion.

An­nisette-George asked him to re­gain his com­po­sure and ad­vised MPs to ex­er­cise tol­er­ance and re­spect each oth­er—the first of her many (fu­tile) ap­peals for this.

Min­utes lat­er Im­bert was back to “bust­ing” Rati­ram’s query on a $100,000 ex­pen­di­ture for THA en­ter­tain­ment.

Im­bert re­tort­ed, “That ($100,000) was 0.5 per cent of what the Op­po­si­tion Leader spent on en­ter­tain­ment.”

At an­oth­er point Im­bert told Ratitram “please pay at­ten­tion” on cer­tain fig­ures, to which Rati­ram ad­vised him to pay at­ten­tion to the fig­ures in Bud­get doc­u­ment.

“Please re­boot! Every­body re­boot so we could go for­ward,” An­nisette- George ap­pealed.

Rati­ram then chuck­led, mut­ter­ing an aside with the words “Port-of-Spain North….Laven­tille” among them.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the UNCs Tan­coo told An­nisette-George that Young had just leaned across and sug­gest­ed that “racist com­ments are be­ing made by peo­ple on this (UNC) side.”

The UNC’s Kadi­jah Ameen added loud­ly, “He said racist! He said it twice!”

Tan­coo re­peat­ed, “The (POS North) MPs on two oc­ca­sions thus far leaned across and in­di­cat­ed MPs on this side were mak­ing ‘racist’ state­ment, we are ‘racists’.”

PNM MPs start­ed yelling and Tan­coo point­ed out Young.

An­nisette–George asked Young to with­draw what he‘d said, if in­deed he’d said such a thing.

Young asked, “ With­draw say­ing what they are?!”

He re­fused and An­nisette-George cau­tioned Young, adding, “Take a lit­tle walk and re­boot your­self.”

“And I don’t need sup­port from any­one,” she added as UNC MPs vig­or­ous­ly desk-thumped ap­proval of her or­der.

Young left the cham­ber, ap­pear­ing to mut­ter and didn’t re­spond to query. From there, Im­bert and oth­ers re­turned to col­lect­ing An­nisette-George’s warn­ings.

Young calls Tan­coo “boy”

The UNC’s Tan­coo told re­porters Young al­so used the term “boy” aimed at him. Young was look­ing at Tan­coo when he made the com­ment about “racists” and when Tan­coo called him out on it, he re­peat­ed it, in­clud­ing the term “boy.”

Tan­coo added, “I will not be in­tim­i­dat­ed by Stu­art Young and his rant­i­ngs, his race bait­ing or his di­vi­sive at­tacks. His vile com­ments weren’t just aimed at me per­son­al­ly, but against the in­tegri­ty of our Par­lia­ment and our na­tion’s har­mo­ny.”

“The di­verse cit­i­zen­ry we rep­re­sent across T&T will no longer be frag­ment­ed by Mr Young’s util­i­sa­tion of colo­nial-era “di­vide and con­quer” strate­gies. It’s dis­grace­ful this Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to head, ar­guably, one of the more pow­er­ful min­istries in this coun­try, and it’s ex­treme­ly dis­turb­ing he’d en­gage in such con­duct.”

“The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter does this na­tion a grave dis­ser­vice by at­tempt­ing to pro­voke such mal­ice—the na­tion must see him for who he is and con­demn his odi­ous pos­tur­ing.”

Young re­sponds

Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment in re­sponse to what tran­spired dur­ing the sit­ting.

“The UNC op­po­si­tion has con­sis­tent­ly and in­ten­tion­al­ly wrong­ly re­ferred to the con­stituen­cy of Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West and the two Laven­tille/ Mor­vant con­stituen­cies.

The UNC mem­bers do this in­ten­tion­al­ly, as at a bare min­i­mum, the name plates of con­stituen­cies are placed clear­ly in front of mem­bers’ seats for cor­rect ref­er­ence.

In the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tions the UNC had posters for their can­di­date for Port of Spain North/ St Ann’s West cir­cu­lat­ing with the wrong con­stituen­cy name show­ing their clear dis­dain and dis­re­spect for the con­stituen­cy.

As the elect­ed mem­ber of par­lia­ment for Port of Spain North/ St Ann’s West I will not per­mit the UNC op­po­si­tion to dis­re­spect my con­stituents.

To­day in the par­lia­ment, the UNC mem­bers con­tin­ued with this dis­gust­ing be­hav­iour and I called them out on it. I will con­tin­ue, with­out fear, to call out the UNC and their dis­re­spect­ful treat­ment of the con­stituents of Port of Spain, Laven­tille and Mor­vant.”