Richard?Lord

The US Gov­ern­ment is dis­tanc­ing it­self from state­ments made by for­mer New York Gov­er­nor David Pa­ter­son at a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)| ral­ly in Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day.Pa­ter­son, who was in­vit­ed as one of the guest speak­ers at the event, was crit­i­cal of T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Speak­ing to an au­di­ence of PNM sup­port­ers, can­di­dates and the par­ty's lead­er­ship, Pa­ter­son said Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment was "so dis­hon­est that it shut down all of the agen­cies to give sta­tis­tics on its own progress."A re­lease, is­sued by the Pub­lic Af­fairs Sec­tion of the em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, said the US Gov­ern­ment, and the Em­bassies that rep­re­sent it abroad "do not en­dorse can­di­dates or par­ties in for­eign elec­tions."

"US cit­i­zens are free to ex­press their opin­ions in any fo­rum, whether in the US or abroad," it stat­ed, adding that "opin­ions ex­pressed by US cit­i­zens who are for­mer of­fice-hold­ers, ei­ther on the Fed­er­al or State lev­el, should not be seen as re­flect­ing the pol­i­cy or views of the US Gov­ern­ment."

And Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the UNC , Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said both Pat­ter­son and for­mer US Con­gress­man Edol­phus Towns for­eign­ers were "out of place to come on T&T soil and bad mouth our prime min­is­ter."Mooni­lal said: "They both have se­ri­ous cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct is­sues around their heads," adding that "in Amer­i­ca they are un­e­lec­table and now they come to sup­port the un­de­sir­able."

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley could not be con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day but the state­ment was con­demned by for­mer head of the pub­lic ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas, who said it was a clear in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal af­fairs of a sov­er­eign na­tion.Du­mas said that was "not ac­cept­able," adding that he was stunned by the "high­ly im­prop­er" com­ments.

He not­ed that Pa­ter­son was the Chair­man of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in New York and con­se­quent­ly a se­nior par­ty of­fi­cial."It was as­tound­ing that the PNM should have in­vit­ed him to come to this coun­try and make such a state­ment, which was a clear in­ter­ven­tion in the af­fairs of T&T. It was rep­re­hen­si­ble and I re­ject it to­tal­ly."

Du­mas said he want­ed to know what kind of think­ing would have in­flu­enced the de­ci­sion to in­vite Pa­ter­son to make those com­ments at the ral­ly."It showed a lack of un­der­stand­ing and a lack of na­tion­al­i­ty and a lack of self-re­spect." Du­mas said that would nev­er have hap­pened un­der the first PNM leader and the coun­try's first Prime Min­is­ter, the late Dr Er­ic Williams. Du­mas said he can­not sit back and ac­cept that as nor­mal.

He said there was a pub­lic out­cry and con­dem­na­tion in June when British co­me­di­an John Oliv­er had un­favourable things to say about Jack Warn­er and T&T in mat­ters re­lat­ed to Fi­fa. He said if there was con­dem­na­tion then why should Pa­ter­son's re­marks be ac­cept­ed now by cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

And for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Ralph Maraj said while the PNM's ral­ly on Sat­ur­day was suc­cess­ful, he was "not hap­py that the for­mer (US) gov­er­nor came to our coun­try and got in­volved in our po­lit­i­cal af­fairs in that way."It was not right for the for­mer gov­er­nor to speak in "such a deroga­to­ry man­ner about our prime min­is­ter and I am not be­ing par­ti­san."