Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

“Yel­low is the code!”

That was so­ca star Neil “Iw­er” George’s re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia’s point­ed ques­tion on if he is sup­port­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

“Iw­er” shocked many on Tues­day evening at a UNC po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the La Joya Sport­ing Com­plex when he ap­peared on stage at the end of the night’s pro­ceed­ings to ser­e­nade Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the par­ty cel­e­brat­ed her birth­day.

The so­ca artiste told Per­sad-Bisses­sar he had two gifts for her. One was a bou­quet of flow­ers, and the oth­er was when he took off his jack­et to re­veal a navy-blue UNC T-shirt.

It was a move that sent the crowd in­to rap­tur­ous ap­plause.

He then broke in­to a ren­di­tion of his hit song Wa­ter; how­ev­er, he changed the lyrics to say, “PNM on fire, Stu­art Young on fire, the peo­ple want Kam­la!”

Guardian Me­dia sought to con­firm with George yes­ter­day if it was a gen­uine en­dorse­ment of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC, to which he said, “Was I wear­ing a UNC T-shirt? So then that speaks for it­self. I took off my shirt; I was wear­ing a UNC T-shirt. I told the la­dy I have two presents. I brought a bou­quet, then I took off my T-shirt and had on a UNC T-shirt. Do you think I still have to an­swer if that is an en­dorse­ment?”

Iw­er ad­vised that Guardian Me­dia lis­ten to the words of his song to bet­ter un­der­stand his po­si­tion.

On the La Joya stage, Iw­er sang, “Ten years now, the peo­ple suf­fer­ing, rais­ing tax, and rais­ing every­thing. Now it’s time to vote them out of here.”

In the in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, he said, “All the ev­i­dence is in front of you.”

He added, “Any­thing you say in pol­i­tics could fol­low you for the rest of your life. And I on­ly say what I could de­fend. And what I say in the song, I could de­fend that. And if you look at the con­sen­sus amongst the peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, 90 per cent of the peo­ple would agree with the cho­rus of the song that the peo­ple want Kam­la.”

When Guardian Me­dia un­der­scored that some en­ter­tain­ers would de­fend their ap­pear­ance at po­lit­i­cal events and say it was just a job they were be­ing paid for and not nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­port for the par­ty,

Iw­er re­spond­ed, “I wouldn’t say that.”