Abysmal! That's the depth to which Vernella "Shopping Toppin" Alleyne went on Wednesday, March 25, in the once august House of the Parliament of T&T. It is unlikely that she would be able to scrape up the fragments of her integrity and self-respect from the dung-heap which she has scavenged to pull that repugnant stunt.
It was a cold, calculated, brutal, uncaring, insensitive attack on every person who has endured such an horrific ordeal. It has struck at the heart of the painstaking efforts of the Rape Crisis Centre and other such support entities and it devalues the progress made by all rape victims.It gave perverse, twisted parliamentary backing to sexual predators through its use as a wrecking ball in her attempt to deal a death blow to Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley, in the process of which she is now profusely bleeding from a self-inflicted, hopefully fatal, political wound.
Vernella Alleyne-Toppin has demonstrated that she is willing to drag the national flag into the gutter of political expediency for power...apparently by any means necessary.Her choice of ammo inarguably set an all-time low to an already outrageously overbearing silly season and also dealt a mortal blow to acceptable behaviour not just by our public officials but also, to that which is expected of any right thinking citizen!
She has represented herself and those whose case she was defending as a 21st century thug and disgrace to civility, not just in T&T but also in every nation aspiring towards development and, to its vulnerable who are daily subjected to the ravenous, criminal indignity of rape.
The last place Alleyne-Toppin should be after that outrage is in the Ministry of the People and Social Development. In fact, the only job she should ever have henceforth is community service to those whose unwitting, unsolicited, unfortunate fate she has so callously scandalised for the world to see and hear with the full support of her parliamentary colleagues.History may be kinder to you than you were on Wednesday under Parliamentary privilege.
Clear guidelines are now quite obviously well overdue for political engagement by all, particularly during electioneering.
Debra J Johnson