The Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour has said Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “light em up” com­ment on Mon­day was in­ap­pro­pri­ate and in­sen­si­tive and a breach of the code of con­duct.

It al­so deemed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Ju­ly 13 lan­guage about Per­sad-Bisses­sar as in­sen­si­tive and in­ap­pro­pri­ate, adding it could be re­gard­ed as deroga­to­ry.

It is Row­ley’s third breach.

A state­ment on mat­ters con­cern­ing the two lead­ers, as well as on com­plaints about oth­er politi­cians, was is­sued yes­ter­day by the coun­cil’s sec­re­tary Leela Ramdeen.

Oth­er coun­cil mem­bers are Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath (Chair); Ralph Pe­ter (Vice Chair); Dr Bev­er­ly Beck­les; Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein; Dr Olabisi Kuboni; Dr East­lyn McKen­zie and Rev Prof Carlisle Pem­ber­ton.

The state­ment fol­lowed Wednes­day’s coun­cil meet­ing which con­sid­ered sev­er­al com­plaints as pos­si­ble breach­es of the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct.

The coun­cil pre­sent­ed the com­plaints which were deemed to be in breach of the code, in­clud­ing com­ments made by UNC front­lin­er Jack Warn­er, UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts, the UNC’s claim of an “in­her­i­tance tax”—and an is­sue in­volv­ing PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der.

The coun­cil stat­ed that it re­ceived five re­ports about the words used by Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the UNC’s Ch­agua­nas meet­ing on Mon­day, when she said, “So when the crim­i­nals in­vade your home, draw your li­censed firearm and light them up! Emp­ty the whole clip.”

The com­plaint was that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­vok­ing vi­o­lence.

The coun­cil stat­ed in its re­lease yes­ter­day, “The so­ci­ety is aware that one pol­i­cy ad­vo­cat­ed by the UNC is ‘Stand Your Ground’ and to this end, the speak­er was elab­o­rat­ing and de­fend­ing the pro­posed pol­i­cy. While pol­i­cy elab­o­ra­tion is in keep­ing with the code, in the con­text of a so­ci­ety be­sieged with crime and vi­o­lence, the lan­guage used on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms should be tem­pered to re­duce so­ci­etal vi­o­lence.”

The re­lease added, “The lan­guage, there­fore, is what is con­tentious here and from the coun­cil’s per­spec­tive, the lan­guage used is in­ap­pro­pri­ate and in­sen­si­tive.”

The coun­cil ex­plained that the com­ment breach­es Sec­tion 2 on Pro­hib­it­ed Con­duct where politi­cians should not use lan­guage or act in a way that may pro­voke vi­o­lence; in­tim­i­date can­di­dates, par­ty mem­bers, rep­re­sen­ta­tives or sup­port­ers of par­ties/ can­di­dates, or vot­ers; in­vite, en­cour­age or fos­ter ha­tred, re­sent­ment or any form of vi­o­lence.”

The coun­cil al­so re­mind­ed all politi­cians of its Com­mit­ment Sec­tion of the Code: main­tain­ing the high­est moral prin­ci­ples and eth­i­cal stan­dards with re­spect to their con­duct dur­ing the cam­paign.

On Thurs­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was un­apolo­getic about the re­marks and re­peat­ed them in graph­ic “Trini­bad” styling.

Mean­while, the coun­cil said a com­plaint was sub­mit­ted by the UNC con­cern­ing Row­ley’s pre­sen­ta­tion at a Ju­ly 13 Tu­na­puna PNM meet­ing.

It stat­ed, “When Dr Row­ley used ‘gra­tu­itous eth­nic in­nu­en­do’ sug­gest­ing that In­di­ans in gen­er­al, and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in par­tic­u­lar, are ‘al­co­holics and drunk­ards’ telling the au­di­ence, ‘Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar drink your rum and go back to bed.’

“The coun­cil has re­viewed the en­tire speech and has found that the lan­guage used by Dr Row­ley was again in­sen­si­tive and in­ap­pro­pri­ate and could be deemed to be deroga­to­ry. Pro­hib­it­ed Sec­tion claus­es 3 and 4 are thus ap­plic­a­ble here­in,” it stat­ed.

Jack breached code too

A com­plaint was re­ceived anony­mous­ly about Warn­er’s pre­sen­ta­tion at a Ju­ly 24 UNC meet­ing, when it was claimed Warn­er breached the code with re­gard to sev­er­al is­sues amongst which were:

• Warn­er re­ferred to Min­is­ter Stu­art Young us­ing pe­jo­ra­tive names

• Warn­er ref­er­enced Young’s ex-wife and her daugh­ter and they are not in­volved in the cam­paign

• Warn­er on re­peat­ed oc­ca­sions re­ferred to Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les in the fe­male gen­der, though apol­o­gis­ing every time, he used the fe­male pro­noun.

The coun­cil said all of this sought to as­sas­si­nate the char­ac­ter of Young and Gon­za­les, and the ref­er­ences to Young’s fam­i­ly mem­bers, who are not part of the cam­paign.

‘Anil very dis­re­spect­ful

to women’

And a com­plaint was re­ceived about Anil Roberts’ pre­sen­ta­tion at the UNC’s San­gre Grande meet­ing re­cent­ly.

In its re­lease yes­ter­day, the coun­cil stat­ed, “His at­tack on Ms Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son was very dis­re­spect­ful to women in gen­er­al, and then he went on to make state­ments about oth­er fe­male PNM of­fi­cials which can­not be sub­stan­ti­at­ed.”

The coun­cil said it re­viewed Roberts’ speech and found his pre­sen­ta­tion went against the clause in the Com­mit­ment Sec­tion of the Code, which ad­vo­cates main­tain­ing the high­est moral prin­ci­ples and eth­i­cal stan­dards with re­spect to con­duct dur­ing the cam­paign. “Claus­es 3 and 5 of the Pro­hib­it­ed Con­duct sec­tion as out­lined above is al­so ap­plic­a­ble here­in and thus is deemed to be a breach of the Code,” it added.

PNM com­plains about “in­her­i­tance tax”, PEP leader

The coun­cil said a com­plaint was al­so made by the PNM that the UNC fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry be­ing used on its plat­forms that an “in­her­i­tance tax” will be in­tro­duced by the PNM Gov­ern­ment.

“The PNM has de­nied that this was ever a con­sid­er­a­tion. The coun­cil is un­able to de­ter­mine the ac­cu­ra­cy of this claim on ei­ther side, but notes that un­der the Pro­hib­it­ed Con­duct sec­tion of the Code, there is a clause which speaks to neg­a­tive cam­paign­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing.”

The coun­cil al­so stat­ed, “From the news­pa­pers, there has been a call, by the PNM, to con­sid­er the ac­tions of PEP po­lit­i­cal leader on at­tempt­ing ‘to force a con­fronta­tion’ with a PNM can­di­date while cam­paign­ing on Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 29, 2023.

“The coun­cil was lim­it­ed to the in­for­ma­tion in the news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, which in­clud­ed a re­sponse from Mr Phillip Alexan­der. Mr Alexan­der, in the ar­ti­cle, ad­mit­ted to knock­ing on the door but de­nied bang­ing.

“Ac­knowl­edg­ing the dis­pute over the ex­act ac­tions, how­ev­er, the code speaks to the is­sue of a cam­paign that is free from fear.”

The coun­cil has come un­der fire from Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, who ques­tioned if it was “bi­ased.” His com­ments came af­ter the coun­cil found that the PNM had breached the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct on two more oc­ca­sions. That de­ci­sion was pub­li­cised on Ju­ly 25.

In a re­lease, the coun­cil ex­plained then that the first com­plaint was re­lat­ed to the lan­guage used by the Prime Min­is­ter on the PNM plat­form at a meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do on Ju­ly 15 (the sec­ond in­volved the post­ing of fly­ers by two PNM can­di­dates).

It was the sec­ond breach for Row­ley.

The first was said to have oc­curred on Ju­ly 7. The coun­cil found then that the PM used lan­guage that was in­sen­si­tive and in­ap­pro­pri­ate dur­ing a cam­paign meet­ing in St James.