Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) will to­day seek House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George’s per­mis­sion to re­fer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to Par­lia­ment’s Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges, over his com­ments aimed at Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar while she and oth­er mem­bers were ex­it­ing the cham­ber last week (Oc­to­ber 10).

Al­though the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP pub­licly apol­o­gised to the pub­lic for his “hot mic” com­ment yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was not ac­cept­ing it.

Tak­ing to his Face­book page yes­ter­day, Young said, “I ac­cept that more is ex­pect­ed of me as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, and I wish to record my re­gret that this ‘cross-talk’ has un­nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­tract­ed pub­lic dis­course. Please ac­cept my hum­blest apolo­gies.”

Young said he hoped and trust­ed that “my record of ser­vice to this coun­try speaks for it­self.”

He did, how­ev­er, not di­rect­ly re­fer to Per­sad-Bisses­sar in his apol­o­gy.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the Op­po­si­tion has writ­ten to House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, stat­ing its in­ten­tion to re­fer Young to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges.

Sources say it was on the grounds that Young used ob­scene, of­fen­sive and in­sult­ing lan­guage that brought the House in­to con­tempt and ridicule.

On Oc­to­ber 10, as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was get­ting set to wrap up the 2025 Bud­get de­bate, obliv­i­ous that his mi­cro­phone was on, Young was heard jok­ing­ly say­ing that the Op­po­si­tion Leader was go­ing to use the bath­room to “za­m­mi”—a cre­ole term of­ten used to de­scribe a les­bian or ho­mo­sex­u­al woman.

Sources say in their let­ter to the House Speak­er, the Op­po­si­tion said Young’s words were de­lib­er­ate­ly ma­li­cious and had no place in a so­ci­ety where women con­tin­ue to be bul­lied and face threats to their lives.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the let­ter un­der­scores that even if Young con­sid­ered his com­ments as “cross-talk,” there is a lim­it to that lev­el of “pi­cong.”

The let­ter re­port­ed­ly al­so states that the com­ment, which went vi­ral on sev­er­al me­dia plat­forms, in­ferred that Op­po­si­tion MPs, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader, en­gaged in pros­ti­tu­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Stand­ing Or­ders which gov­ern the House, a mat­ter di­rect­ly con­cern­ing the priv­i­leges of the House shall take prece­dence over all oth­er busi­ness. Any mem­ber de­sir­ing to raise a mat­ter un­der this Stand­ing Or­der shall first ob­tain leave of the Speak­er, who will de­ter­mine whether the mem­ber is en­ti­tled to raise the mat­ter as a ques­tion of priv­i­lege.

The com­mit­tee will be chaired by the House Speak­er and will con­sist of five oth­er mem­bers.

Mo­hammed: Stu­art should

have known bet­ter

Be­fore walk­ing in­to the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen told Guardian Me­dia that she hoped the mat­ter would be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

“The House will next meet on Thurs­day (to­day) at the end of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing and it will be in­ter­est­ing to see the rul­ing of the Speak­er. I trust that an in­ci­dent this ridicu­lous and de­spi­ca­ble will not be treat­ed as some­thing you can mere­ly apol­o­gise, sweep un­der the car­pet and go your way,” she said.

Mean­while, so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, who called for the apol­o­gy dur­ing a news con­fer­ence out­side the Red House on Tues­day, said he too will be ea­ger­ly await­ing An­nisette-George’s rul­ing.

“I wait­ing to see if the Speak­er, who is al­so a woman, will take ac­tion on what the Min­is­ter said. And I don’t want to know that the Speak­er said that he apol­o­gised. We have to set the high­est stan­dards in Par­lia­ment where in­tegri­ty is con­cerned,” he said.

Ever­s­ley said he was dis­ap­point­ed by the re­ac­tion of the var­i­ous women’s rights groups in this coun­try and called on them to gath­er out­side the Red House to de­mand that the Par­lia­ment deals with Young’s state­ment.

Com­ment­ing on Young’s apol­o­gy, Ever­s­ley said, “If it is sin­cere, and com­ing from his heart, I will ac­cept it but as a per­son who is al­leged to be the next leader of the PNM, I do not think he is fit to be the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM.”

Weigh­ing in on the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he be­lieves Young should have apol­o­gised to the Op­po­si­tion Leader di­rect­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly as he be­lieves it’s a sen­si­tive time in so­ci­ety as it per­tains to the is­sue of bul­ly­ing.

Mo­hammed said this was not the ex­am­ple set by for­mer prime min­is­ters Patrick Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day.

“I think Mr Young should have known bet­ter but I be­lieve to a great ex­tent that it was in­ten­tion­al. Very un­be­com­ing of some­one who is the heir ap­par­ent to the PNM throne, very un­couth and of low cal­i­bre for some­one whom the PNM prais­es as some­one who is so pa­tri­ot­ic and cares about the coun­try over par­ty,” he said.

Mo­hammed added that the Op­po­si­tion is do­ing the right thing by seek­ing the in­ter­ven­tion of the Par­lia­ment.

“Whether or not they get it ap­proved (Priv­i­leges) they should still try be­cause some­thing of this na­ture should not just be left as old talk for us to get over. It was dis­gust­ing. The lan­guage was dis­gust­ing and while we en­cour­age cross-talk, it should be pi­cong at a lev­el that should still be re­spect­ful,” he con­tend­ed.

LGBT+ group, Queer Cor­ner Caribbean, which had called on Young to say sor­ry, al­so felt as though his apol­o­gy missed the mark.

“While we ac­knowl­edge the state­ment is­sued by the Min­is­ter, its fail­ure to ad­dress who was im­pact­ed by his com­ments di­min­ish­es its ef­fec­tive­ness. Com­ments of this na­ture from politi­cians can per­pet­u­ate a cul­ture of dis­crim­i­na­tion and hos­til­i­ty to­wards the al­ready vul­ner­a­ble LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ty,” said co-founder Cherisse Berke­ley.

Berke­ley is invit­ing Young to meet with them so he can bet­ter un­der­stand the so­ci­etal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of his state­ment.

‘We all make mis­takes’

How­ev­er, the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP is re­ceiv­ing sup­port from with­in his par­ty.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said, “We all make mis­takes and that’s just how it goes.”

For­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford be­lieves Young’s apol­o­gy was sin­cere and shows that he is a class above the UNC MPs.

“Every time a politi­cian ac­cepts re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for some­thing it is in good stand­ing. When the woman (Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) made deroga­to­ry com­ments about Dr Row­ley she nev­er apol­o­gised. When she said he was the child of a rape vic­tim, you re­mem­ber that? And no apol­o­gy came,” he ar­gued.

Ford said the PNM is a dif­fer­ent breed and when they recog­nise an er­ror, it is ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly.

The PNM stal­wart al­so sought to dis­miss claims that Young’s apol­o­gy was mere­ly to clean up his im­age as the PNM re­port­ed­ly seeks a suc­ces­sor to its leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“His im­age has not been tar­nished, there is al­ways cross-talk in Par­lia­ment, is just that this one come out. You don’t know what them fel­las say to PNM peo­ple across the floor, so don’t feel this is an iso­lat­ed case. I have been in Par­lia­ment and I’ve heard worse than that. I don’t see this af­fect­ing Min­is­ter Young or the par­ty,” he said.

On Tues­day dur­ing a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, House Speak­er An­nisette-George said she will not be tol­er­at­ing dis­re­spect in the Par­lia­ment. She al­so en­cour­aged mem­bers to man­age their be­hav­iours.