Sascha Wil­son

Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Moru­ga/Table­land Michelle Ben­jamin is fac­ing heavy crit­i­cism over her in­volve­ment in the fiery protests in her con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day, af­ter she was seen in­struct­ing an­oth­er per­son to place a tyre in the road close to burn­ing de­bris.

An ex­change be­tween Ben­jamin and a po­lice of­fi­cer at the scene of the protest, close to a land­slip along the Hin­dus­tan Es­tate Road, near New Grant, was cap­tured on video by a Guardian Me­dia team.

The con­duct of the of­fi­cer is al­so now be­ing scru­ti­nised.

In the video, Ben­jamin at­tempts to re­move one of sev­er­al tyres from the tray of a pick­up but the of­fi­cer ini­tial­ly cau­tions her against it.

“For your own ben­e­fit, don’t do it. I would as­sist hav­ing your lit­tle gath­er­ing, well not gath­er­ing, please so­cial dis­tanc­ing every­body,” the of­fi­cer said.

Ben­jamin replies, “I need one tyre there, just one.”

The of­fi­cer, in turn, point­ed out that there was al­ready one tyre in the road.

“No, I just need right there,” Ben­jamin in­ter­ject­ed.

The of­fi­cer then asked, “You want to put one in the road, not on the fire?”

The of­fi­cer told her he did not want her to put out the tyre and in­stead, she asked a man to take the tyre off the van.

“Not on the fire eh,” the of­fi­cer ad­vised as the man re­moved the tyre.

Moruga/Tableland MP Michelle Benjamin, speak with police officers yesterday during a protest as residents burn debris over the bad road and poor water supply at Hindustan Estate Road, New Grant.

RISHI RAGOONATH

As the man did so, Ben­jamin in­struct­ed, “Just drop one on the fire there.”

The of­fi­cer again ad­vised that the tyre not be placed on the fire and Ben­jamin in­stead in­struct­ed, “Close to the fire.”

The man then car­ried the tyre to where de­bris was block­ing the road, as the of­fi­cer said, “Right there good...right there good son.”

The of­fi­cer con­tin­ued: “Miss Ben­jamin, you go ahead there now...as I said, so­cial dis­tanc­ing, peo­ple please.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia hours af­ter the in­ci­dent, as the pub­lic re­act­ed to the video and sto­ry on Guardian Me­dia’s sites, Ben­jamin claimed the video was tak­en out of con­text.

She said while she was try­ing to as­sist her protest­ing con­stituents, she was not or­ches­trat­ing the protest.

“The protest in Hin­dus­tan this morn­ing was not or­gan­ised by me. I ar­rived on-site and mem­bers of my con­stituen­cy were present. I think I got a phone call and then I saw the po­lice of­fi­cer try­ing to in­tim­i­date the own­er of the said ve­hi­cle. You would have seen in that video clip, in the sense that they were tak­ing snap­shots of their dri­ver’s per­mit and what have you. And me be­ing the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, I sought to put my­self in be­tween the sit­u­a­tion, should some­one be ar­rest­ed. I would put my­self in that sit­u­a­tion, be­ing that I stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with my con­stituents.”

Angry residents of Rochard Douglas Road in Barrackpore burn debris during a protest yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Com­plain­ing that every square foot of the roads in the Hin­dus­tan Es­tate Road com­mu­ni­ty are bad, she said there are about ten land­slips, one of which oc­curred just two months ago and a truck head­ing to a large egg farm flipped in it.

“I put my­self in harm’s way for him and I ac­tu­al­ly want­ed to high­light that land­slip, and if some­thing is not done im­me­di­ate­ly, those con­stituents would not be able to go to their homes,” she said, adding that the road al­so leads to the Dev­il’s Wood­yard.

“I know to some it may seem ridicu­lous, but as the song says who feels it know it. I feel for my con­stituents and if they want to protest every Mon­day morn­ing, every Tues­day morn­ing, I will be there be­cause I live in the con­stituen­cy and I see what they have to go through on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

She added, “We are fed up. We pay tax­es and our road­way do not re­flect that. They spend a lot of mon­ey. Where is it go­ing? Is it in their friends and fam­i­ly pock­et and quote me on this, be­cause the kind of con­tracts that are be­ing award­ed and our road­way still don’t re­flect it. So some­thing is wrong and we have to stand up, is no longer times for pret­ty pol­i­tics and pret­ty words.”

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said they are now look­ing at all as­pects of the protests, in­clud­ing those at Hin­dus­tan. He added that the con­duct of the of­fi­cer in the video is al­so un­der scruti­ny.

Armed police officers remove tires from Rochard Douglas Road, Barrackpore, following residents protest over poor road conditions and poor water yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The video al­so caught the at­ten­tion of Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, who told Guardian Me­dia, “The min­istry and the coun­try should nev­er con­done this dis­play of in­cite­ment to vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens from any leg­is­la­tor.”