Gail Alexan­der

UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al has lam­bast­ed PNM Sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal for her ver­bal at­tack on her dur­ing Wednes­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting.

Dur­ing de­bate on the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion (Ex­ten­sion of Terms of Of­fice and Val­i­da­tion) Bill, 2023, Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal slammed Lutch­me­di­al’s ear­li­er con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate, adding, “I be­lieve the Sen­a­tor is in­deed ‘as­tound­ed’ and she’s ‘con­fused’ be­cause ap­par­ent­ly for a sec­ond she thought this was ‘spread paal with Mooni­lal’ and this was not the Sen­ate!”

It caused protest from UNC sen­a­tors and an ob­scene tirade by Lutch­me­di­al in the tea­room there­after, Guardian Me­dia was told.

Yes­ter­day, Lutch­me­di­al post­ed com­ments on so­cial me­dia in an ap­par­ent re­sponse to a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle on the is­sue.

She said, “In the le­gal pro­fes­sion, there are don­keys who have nev­er raced and there are thor­ough­breds who race every day. It’s dif­fi­cult to hear a don­key talk about a race it nev­er ran. Some don­keys are af­ford­ed col­umn space and have the temer­i­ty to crit­i­cise the Privy Coun­cil, when they nev­er even ap­pear in a Mag­is­trates’ Court.

“Worse yet is to hear a don­key who tries to race stand up and crit­i­cise the race sim­ply be­cause he can­not win. When such don­key is dec­i­mat­ed and em­bar­rassed, it will ask its don­key friends to bray as loud­ly as pos­si­ble to dis­tract from the lost race. This bray­ing takes the form of per­son­al at­tacks. The spec­ta­tors de­cide that they can be pa­tron­iz­ing be­cause those with no pro­fes­sion­al ac­com­plish­ments to speak of have no char­ac­ter or rep­u­ta­tion to de­fend.”

Lutch­me­di­al added, “As some­one who has stud­ied hard, sac­ri­ficed and ex­celled, jeal­ousy has nev­er been far be­hind me. If one were to take the le­gal acu­men and ac­com­plish­ments of Al-Rawi and his side­kick Sagram­s­ingh- Sook­lal and put them to­geth­er, they still won’t qual­i­fy to stand in my shad­ow, far less my shoes. Jeal­ousy ob­vi­ous­ly con­sumes them both. Per­haps in­stead of us­ing harsh words to ex­press my dis­plea­sure about the per­son­al at­tack on my char­ac­ter, I should have tak­en the cake and pelt it in the tea­room.

“Then I’d be qual­i­fied to be leader of all the don­keys wor­ship­ping at the al­tar of a man who has taught them to be noth­ing but vile and nasty when their in­com­pe­tence is ex­posed. But the sec­ond-rate pro­fes­sion­als al­ways seem to be giv­en first-class cov­er­age in T&T. Naipaul would not be sur­prised. The PNM has al­ways been a par­ty of mediocre hus­tlers, full of talk and ab­solute­ly no heart and no sub­stance. Let the don­keys bray and let them eat cake!”

Dur­ing de­bate lat­er in the sit­ting Wednes­day, UNC Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John apol­o­gised to Lutch­me­di­al, not­ing the PNM wouldn’t apol­o­gise to Lutch­me­di­al af­ter Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal’s ver­bal at­tack.

Not­ing what oc­curred in the cham­ber ear­li­er, she told the Sen­ate the UNC had nev­er seen that Cham­ber de­scend to such a lev­el as now and it was the low­est she’d seen ex­hib­it­ed.

John, who said she was shak­en by it, said the Op­po­si­tion wasn’t there to op­pose but has a role stat­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion. She said if the UNC’s style was a lit­tle vo­cif­er­ous, it was be­cause they were the Op­po­si­tion and had to get their point across. She said if the PNM wasn’t apol­o­gis­ing to Lutch­me­di­al, she would, as the sit­u­a­tion which oc­curred was shame­ful.

John said maybe the Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor was suf­fer­ing from “new­ness”.

Per­sons al­so claimed Lutch­me­di­al had gone to the Par­lia­ment’s tea­room and had used ob­scene lan­guage to re­buff an of­fer of cake from a PNM Min­is­ter.

On Thurs­day, PNM sen­a­tor Ndale Young ex­pressed con­cern at Lutch­me­di­al’s use of ob­scene lan­guage. Yes­ter­day, cer­tain PNM Min­is­ters who were present in Par­lia­ment’s tea­room de­clined com­ment. —Gail Alexan­der