Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the attack launched against him by Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, in which she accused him of being the “Oreo” for the one per cent (Syrian Lebanese Community), proves she is unfit to hold office.
He said since Persad-Bissesasar’s comments, members of the community who are his constituents have told him they are fearful for their lives.
Rowley waded into Persad-Bissessar and those who sought to defend her statements when he addressed the issue head-on at a meeting in Tunapuna on Tuesday night in support of candidates for the People’s National Movement’s internal election. He spent a considerable part of his address on the issue, accusing Persad-Bissessar of wanting to destroy the country for political gain.
Addressing the conversation, Persad-Bissessar’s comment sparked, he said, “I watched carefully and all the apologists find it insensitive but not racial, let me tell you all that is racial. Whenever you are accused in that way, Oreo is the modern politically correct way of calling somebody a ‘house nigger.’”
Rowley said he had seen one expert had sought to justify the statement, saying Oreo could be used among black people.
“So I wonder if black people could call black people niggers?” he asked.
The PM said while there had been a focus on the word “Oreo,” some parts of what Persad-Bissessar said had been “studiously ignored in the media.”
“They don’t want you to understand the extent of what a Prime Minister of 36 months ago, the extent to which she had offended the people.”
He launched into a detailed account of what Persad-Bissessar said, reading from parts of her speech delivered at a UNC Monday Night forum on September 1, in which she accused him of helping the so-called one per cent.
The PM described the attack as “an unrelenting rant of attack by a person who is holding the office of Opposition Leader, leader of the UNC talking about a section of the population of Trinidad and Tobago along racial lines.”
“What have I done to warrant that attack? What have I given to that community, my constituents? Where have I favoured them and with what?” he asked.
Persad-Bissessar’s views in 2018, he said, were an about turn on her position in 2012, when on the 100th anniversary of the Syrian Lebanese community she addressed a gathering at the Diplomatic Centre in which she praised them.
“In 2012 you praising Syrians and then in 2018 you denigrating them. What has changed?” he asked.
Rowley said just like Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler did during the depression in the 1930s in Germany, when he told people the hardship they were going through was being caused by the Jews, was now “exactly what Kamla Persad-Bissessar has said here about the Syrian Lebanese group, that they causing you to have low wage, is them enslaving you, that was Hitler.”
Having served as MP for Diego Martin West since 1991, Rowley said, “Last week was the first time any of my constituents ever came to me and told me that they are fearful about their future and about their business in Trinidad and Tobago, because they are being identified as the problem in Trinidad and Tobago and they are fearful that people could harm them as a result of what is being said to and about them.”
Some members of the Syrian Lebanese community, according to Rowley have even told him that their children refuse to go out because they don’t know what reception they will get outside because of how they have been identified.
“That is where Kamla Persad-Bissessar puts Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.
Rowley declared that Persad-Bissessar is “unfit to hold public office in Trinidad and Tobago,” as the gathering erupted into applause.
He said if there is any person who should have known what ought not to be said or done it should be Persad-Bissessar because she once held the office of PM.
“You should have got it into your DNA, into your blood to know that you treat all persons, that such words don’t even come out of your mouth by accident,” he said.
He said the PNM will never accept what Persad-Bissessar did.
“As for the apologists who tried to spin her outrage into acceptability, I say you could take that and put it where the monkey put the nuts.”
Pinpointing the reaction of former Congress of the People leader Prakash Ramadhar, who deemed the comment not racist but insensitive, Rowley said, “How differently could you call me a nigger. How differently could you call me a house nigger? And for all of you who believe this is an issue which I should not engage, I lived it, is my skin, not yours.”