Richard Lord

For­mer Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son says his meet­ing with prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­tend­ed to re­duce the lev­el of con­fronta­tion in T&T. Robin­son on Thurs­day host­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar and po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) Ash­worth Jack at his Eller­slie Park, Mar­aval, home. He told the Guardian yes­ter­day: "There seems to be, if not in­ten­tion­al­ly, the ap­pear­ance of some phys­i­cal as­pect in the ad­ver­sar­i­al po­si­tions be­ing tak­en."

He said his lun­cheon meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­tend­ed to "make a small con­tri­bu­tion, by an act of ci­vil­i­ty." Robin­son said he al­so de­cid­ed to have lunch with the UNC leader be­cause "it was the first time in the his­to­ry of T&T that a la­dy is com­pet­ing in the race to be­come Prime Min­is­ter; I felt that some de­cen­cy could ap­pear in elec­tion­eer­ing in our coun­try at this time." Robin­son said many cit­i­zens had been com­plain­ing to him about how "dis­turbed they are by the at­mos­phere in T&T with re­spect to the elec­tion cam­paign." Robin­son, al­so a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, said: "I, my­self, am quite un­hap­py over the lev­el of ar­gu­ment and rhetoric that is tak­ing place.

"It is very dif­fer­ent from what took place in my time in the ear­ly years when I en­tered pol­i­tics," he added. He said the ar­gu­ment that "if I am cor­rupt as I do ad­mit, then you are more cor­rupt that I am" is "a non-ar­gu­ment and a dis­rep­utable one." Robin­son said he hoped his lun­cheon meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar "would be a sig­nal, how­ev­er minute, to help re­duce the lev­el of con­fronta­tion." He said all politi­cians must re­mem­ber, as he did while in pol­i­tics, that "our chil­dren are wit­ness­es to our be­hav­iour and may in some way be in­flu­enced by it to the detri­ment of the fu­ture of our na­tion."