An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guard­fi­an.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has again lashed out at Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over com­ments she made in re­la­tion to her par­ty’s plan to im­ple­ment stand your ground law if her par­ty is re­turned to of­fice.

Say­ing while the is­sue of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty was not new to this so­ci­ety, which would have wit­nessed its grad­ual es­ca­la­tion over the years, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said no one needs to be re-trau­ma­tised by per­sons on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form who are on­ly in­tent on us­ing it to cre­ate fear-mon­ger­ing among the mass­es.

In­stead, he urged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to give cit­i­zens some­thing use­ful for so­ci­ety to en­gage in as a re­sponse to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“But talk­ing bout emp­ty the ‘mat­ic and emp­ty the clip...all of that is un­for­tu­nate­ly a script that some­body wrote for the Op­po­si­tion Leader who went off and made a fool of her­self,” Row­ley said on Sat­ur­day night as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions dur­ing Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter at the La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph.

Row­ley cau­tioned that there was a prob­lem with the con­ver­sa­tion be­ing tout­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He elab­o­rat­ed, “In our so­ci­ety, our young peo­ple who are fash­ion con­scious...they know that lin­go, they know what that means and when you bring that to cen­tre stage and bring it on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form to be part of your speech, you’re not ed­u­cat­ing any­body. You are sim­ply giv­ing recog­nised rank to some­thing that is detri­men­tal and dele­te­ri­ous to our well-be­ing.”

He said the UNC’s cur­rent ar­gu­ment was ir­rel­e­vant in the con­text of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion cam­paign, since no lo­cal gov­ern­ment body could pass such a law.

Not­ing that such law al­so pro­vid­ed li­censed firearm users with a clear­ance to act with­out pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, Row­ley said even now, some 14 states in the US were try­ing to deal with the neg­a­tive fall­out from the law.

Row­ley said, how­ev­er, that it was for­tu­nate that the ma­jor­i­ty of the na­tion’s young peo­ple were not in­to that and for those who were in­to it, “they know what they are choos­ing as their way of life.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it is that choice of the way of life that is part of our prob­lem, so to give it rank on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form is to tell me that you have noth­ing to con­tribute to the fight against crime,” he said.

Re­in­forc­ing that se­mi-au­to­mat­ic weapons re­mained il­le­gal in T&T, Row­ley ad­mit­ted that some per­sons had re­cent­ly gained ac­cess to them.

How­ev­er, he trained his guns on those he claimed were, “the same peo­ple who know it is il­le­gal to have au­to­mat­ic weapons like that, have sold them and giv­en them per­mits to get gun parts to con­vert their se­mi-au­to­mat­ic to au­to­mat­ic.”

“That’s what has been hap­pen­ing in T&T,” Row­ley said.

“In­ci­den­tal­ly, the very said voic­es that are try­ing to tell you that as a so­lu­tion and an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prob­lem, have some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cre­at­ing it.”

De­clar­ing that he was unim­pressed with the lin­go used by Trini­bad artistes, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “I don’t en­cour­age young peo­ple to go down that road.”

He fur­ther said T&T was still a free coun­try and as long as the law wasn’t bro­ken, peo­ple were en­ti­tled to do what they want to.

How­ev­er, he warned that there were con­se­quences to sub-cul­tures that, “dam­age you if you be­lieve that you can play with them, use them for self-pur­pos­es, and not end up con­tribut­ing to the ex­is­tence and sus­te­nance of such dam­ag­ing sub-cul­tures.”

It was on­ly last Thurs­day that the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour ruled that Per­sad- Bisses­sar had breached the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct with her con­tro­ver­sial “light them up” com­ments, not­ing they could be in­ter­pret­ed as in­cit­ing vi­o­lence.

Of­fi­cials con­firmed they had re­ceived five re­ports about the words used by Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal ad­dress on Ju­ly 31, when she urged, “So when the crim­i­nals in­vade your home, draw your li­censed firearm and light them up. Emp­ty the whole clip.”

The coun­cil deemed it in­ap­pro­pri­ate and in­sen­si­tive and a breach of Sec­tion 2 on Pro­hib­it­ed Con­duct. The coun­cil’s rul­ing fol­lowed a meet­ing on Au­gust 2 to con­sid­er sev­er­al com­plaints as pos­si­ble breach­es of the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct.

De­spite this rul­ing and con­dem­na­tion from the PM, Gov­ern­ment and some sec­tors of the pub­lic over her com­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­fused to with­draw them and, in fact, dou­bled down on them at a sec­ond meet­ing last week. The UNC is al­so stand­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the is­sue.