The Na­tion­al Youth Arm of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has re­spond­ed to state­ments al­leged­ly made by Hilton Sandy, a can­di­date for the dis­trict of Rox­bor­ough in the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion on Jan­u­ary 21.

It de­scribed Sandy's ut­ter­ances as "racial­ly di­vi­sive and dis­re­spect­ful to the mul­ti-racial pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Sandy was re­port­ed as say­ing on a PNM plat­form on Fri­day in To­ba­go that "a ship is wait­ing in Cal­cut­ta to sail to To­ba­go" if the PNM is not suc­cess­ful in the THA elec­tions.

A me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, signed by Nicholas Mor­ris, chair­man of the UNC Youth Arm, said the state­ments said to have been made by Sandy were "not on­ly an ex­am­ple of po­lit­i­cal mis­chief and pro­pa­gan­da but al­so show that the PNM has sunk to an all-time low by us­ing race as a mech­a­nism to win votes."

The group felt it even more dis­re­spect­ful that nei­ther Orville Lon­don, leader of the PNM team in the THA elec­tion and a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, nor Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, had dis­ci­plined Sandy nor dis­tanced them­selves from his state­ments.

The UNC Youth Arm called on both to pub­licly con­demn the state­ments.

Fail­ure to do so, it said, would in­di­cate that "not on­ly is the PNM con­don­ing racism and us­ing it as a po­lit­i­cal tool to win an elec­tion but it would re­flect flaws in both the lead­er­ship and na­tion­al vi­sion of Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

"T&T is a na­tion com­prised of peo­ple of many dif­fer­ent racial, cul­tur­al and re­li­gious back­grounds. How­ev­er, our suc­cess as a na­tion has been due to the uni­ty we have fos­tered and sus­tained, thus as a na­tion we must re­main unit­ed as a peo­ple to con­tin­ue our de­vel­op­ment as on­ly in uni­ty is there strength.

The UNC Youth Arm asks To­bag­o­ni­ans to "ig­nore such ma­li­cious state­ments and vote on is­sues which af­fect their stan­dard of liv­ing such as health, ed­u­ca­tion and in­fra­struc­ture all of which have been ne­glect­ed by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment both in their tenure in the THA and cen­tral gov­ern­ment."