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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Rowley rubbishes UNC’s race baiting claim

by

Loyse Vincent
2343 days ago
20190213
PNM supporters at the party’s cottage meeting at the Mason Hall High School in Tobago on Tuesday.

PNM supporters at the party’s cottage meeting at the Mason Hall High School in Tobago on Tuesday.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says is­sues of race and slav­ery are be­ing used to by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ap­peal to the emo­tions of Afro-Trinida­di­ans in this coun­try to dis­cour­age them from vot­ing.

He made the com­ment dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Ma­son Hall on Tues­day night, as he re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tions that the PNM was us­ing race bait­ing as part of their cur­rent tac­tics.

“As Op­po­si­tion Leader I ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to the Di­vali Na­gar site and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her cronies re­fused to at­tend the Na­gar be­cause I was in­vit­ed to it,” Row­ley said as he gave an ex­am­ple of the type of be­hav­iour the UNC ex­hib­it­ed to­wards him as an Afro-Trinida­di­an leader.

Ad­dress­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s race bait­ing al­le­ga­tion di­rect­ly, he asked, “Kam­la is that you?”

Re­call­ing an in­vi­ta­tion one year to at­tend the an­nu­al Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas, Row­ley said Per­sad Bisses­sar and some mem­bers of her par­ty had re­fused to at­tend while he was there.

He added that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, “who now sud­den­ly is the de­fend­er of African peo­ple in this coun­try, she sud­den­ly dis­cov­er that slave mas­ters didn’t give us noth­ing when they put us off the land and she is go­ing to make sure that black peo­ple get land in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned the gen­uine­ness of her state­ment, ask­ing whether her gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted for­mer Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed lands eq­ui­tably.

“For five years she over­saw land dis­tri­b­u­tion in Ca­roni, she must tell us how much of the land she gave to black peo­ple.”

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the Op­po­si­tion leader is al­so us­ing the com­mon stereo­type of the African male be­ing dri­ven by sex and un­fit to lead. He re­called that when he was in Op­po­si­tion, UNC MP Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin came to Par­lia­ment and “ac­cused me and my fa­ther of rape.”

He al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of “of­fer­ing mon­ey left, right and cen­tre” to not vote, as that will re­sult in the PNM los­ing the elec­tions.

“If that is the type of pol­i­tics that is so trans­par­ent in this coun­try now and if you can be en­cour­aged to not ex­er­cise your de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right so that some­body else can win, so that they can come and thief out the trea­sury again.”

He called on all par­ents to en­cour­age their chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in the elec­toral process, as many of our fore­fa­thers paid a heavy price for the priv­i­lege.


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