Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley was crit­i­cal yes­ter­day of his PNM col­league, THA As­sem­bly­man Hilton Sandy, over com­ments he made on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form last week.

Re­fer­ring to a state­ment at­trib­uted to Sandy on the THA cam­paign trail, in which he re­port­ed­ly told a crowd East In­di­ans would take over the sis­ter isle if they did not re­turn the PNM to pow­er, Row­ley said the com­ment was

in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

"It was un­for­tu­nate that Mr Sandy would have made that kind of ref­er­ence," Row­ley told re­porters at a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain.

Sandy, the THA can­di­date for Rox­bor­ough/De­laford, dur­ing a meet­ing last Fri­day told the crowd in part: "Be strong. Do not let any­one dis­tract you, you are fo­cussed, you are on a good ship, be­cause as I told an­oth­er crew down the road there is a ship at Cal­cut­ta wait­ing to sail to To­ba­go... Cal­cut­ta ship is com­ing down for you."

Many peo­ple, in­clud­ing the po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple Ash­worth Jack, were crit­i­cal of Sandy's state­ment on so­cial me­dia Web sites yes­ter­day, say­ing he was wag­ing a race war in the cam­paign to the Jan­u­ary 21 THA elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley seemed in agree­ment with the sen­ti­ment. "It was wrong and I think he should-what­ev­er im­pli­ca­tions it had-he should apol­o­gise for it."

Row­ley in­sist­ed Sandy's com­ment about Cal­cut­ta "forms no part of the PNM's cam­paign" but added many peo­ple would seek to score po­lit­i­cal points from the un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent. He said the PNM's op­po­nents would want to use Sandy's state­ment to sup­port claims the PNM was en­gaged in a racial cam­paign.

He added: "We cer­tain­ly are not. The peo­ple of To­ba­go sub­scribe to the prin­ci­ple of the na­tion­al an­them, every creed and race find an equal place."

Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised the Ex­press news­pa­per for claim­ing both Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don and him­self cheered on Sandy, who is al­so the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary and Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties in the THA, for his re­marks when the state­ment was played at the launch of the par­ty's cam­paign in To­ba­go at the week­end.

"That's an ab­solute un­truth," Row­ley said.

He said af­ter the in­ci­dent "Mr Sandy was spo­ken to about it and I ex­pect he will rec­ti­fy his mis­step or mis­giv­ings (as) it forms no part of the PNM's pol­i­cy or (elec­tion) cam­paign."

Mean­while, Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er for his state­ment in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day on crime sta­tis­tics for 2012.

He said, based on the of­fi­cial po­lice fig­ures, the mur­der rate in­creased last year when com­pared to 2011. Row­ley said in the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, the mur­der rate re­duced in each of those years.

He said in 2011 the mur­der rate was 354, with a three-month state of emer­gency, and in 2012 the mur­der rate was 383.