sto­ries by
SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

“What prob­lem you have with my name? What’s wrong with my name? Camille, at least I have the name of my an­ces­tors. Where you got yours from? Your name is that of a slave-mas­ter.”

These words from Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Princes Town on Thurs­day night, have brought her con­dem­na­tion from some sec­tors of the pub­lic for its race bait­ing.

At the time, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was re­fer­ring to Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who had dis­par­aged her (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing on May 26.

Robin­son-Reg­is be­gan her con­tri­bu­tion to the PNM meet­ing by fo­cus­ing on Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“There comes a time when we have to call out Kam­la Sushilla Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the cow­ard­ly, de­cep­tive, dis­hon­est, disin­gen­u­ous in­di­vid­ual that she takes, rev­els and takes time in be­ing,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

She re­peat­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s name sev­er­al times to the loud cheers and laugh­ter from the PNM sup­port­ers who were gath­ered.

But it was Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse on Thurs­day that had cit­i­zens call­ing for her re­moval from Par­lia­ment and the UNC lead­er­ship po­si­tion.

While ad­dress­ing her sup­port­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s com­pe­ten­cy in run­ning the coun­try. She then ad­dressed Robin­son-Reg­is.

“You have WPC Camille, cred­it-card-Camille, wigs … wig­gies and there’s an­oth­er one, Camille you think we for­get? Us­ing the Gov­ern­ment cred­it card when you were in of­fice be­fore to buy fer­til­i­ty treat­ment…girl don’t let me start on you, so stop call­ing my name on your plat­form!” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

As she went on, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned why Robin­son-Reg­is was “vexed” over her name, then de­liv­ered her now di­vi­sive state­ment.

A 25-sec­ond-long video clip with Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, draw­ing scathing com­men­tary from some per­sons.

The PNM’s Women’s League al­so is­sued a state­ment in re­sponse.

“On­ly the calami­tous Op­po­si­tion leader would seek to re­duce our com­plex his­to­ry to plat­form fod­der,” the group wrote.

It said all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have sur­names that re­flect their unique his­to­ry as Caribbean peo­ple of var­ied races.

“The Na­tion­al Women’s League con­demns what ap­pears to be bla­tant race bait­ing. The Op­po­si­tion Leader is not a his­to­ri­an or a ge­neti­cist. To deem Mrs Robin­son-Reg­is name as a slave mas­ter’s name is xeno­pho­bic,” the league wrote.

The league al­so ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mock­ing their African an­ces­tors and den­i­grat­ing their ad­vance­ments. It said un­like Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Robin­son-Reg­is was “not a slave to cer­tain predilec­tions.”

“Kam­la Sushilla Per­sad-Bisses­sar, your giv­en name is not ‘more beau­ti­ful’ than Camille Rose­Marie Robin­son-Reg­is’. In­stead of com­par­ing names, ex­am­ine your char­ac­ter!” the state­ment said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee’s (ES­CTT) ex­ec­u­tive chair Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da yes­ter­day for com­ment on the is­sue.

In a state­ment, Uzoma-Wada­da said the com­mit­tee did not un­der­stand how Robin­son-Reg­is’ re­peat­ed call­ing of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s name led to the UNC head dis­parag­ing Robin­son-Reg­is for not hav­ing a name that re­flect­ed her African her­itage. The com­mit­tee called for sen­si­tive cul­tur­al is­sues to be left out of the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

“In an en­vi­ron­ment of racial di­vi­sion and sen­si­tiv­i­ties forged in the caul­dron of colo­nial di­vide and rule, it is ad­vis­able that high­ly sen­si­tive cul­tur­al is­sues not be re­duced to po­lit­i­cal jabs by per­sons who are seen as lead­ers, and more so when they are seen as lead­ers of eth­nic groups,” the ES­CTT said.

The com­mit­tee said In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers did not suf­fer the cen­turies of forced decul­tur­iza­tion that Africans suf­fered.

“In fact, the mi­nor­i­ty whites who colonised and ex­ploit­ed us both saw ad­van­tage in us­ing cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences to main­tain their con­trol. The af­ter-ef­fects of the process that forced us to aban­don our names, lan­guages, spir­i­tu­al be­liefs and even our pos­i­tive emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to the African con­ti­nent are still with us,” the ES­CTT said.

Call­ing for all lead­ers to take care and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the state­ments they make, the com­mit­tee said T&T’s mul­ti-eth­nic so­ci­ety has be­come too ac­cus­tomed to racial and cul­tur­al in­nu­en­dos that cre­ate hurt in one or the oth­er of the ma­jor­i­ty groups.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour chair Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath. He said he could not give a re­sponse in his coun­cil ca­pac­i­ty, as the coun­cil on­ly op­er­ates dur­ing elec­tion sea­sons.

How­ev­er, Ra­goonath, who is al­so a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, weighed in on the pub­lic out­cry over Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments.

“The Op­po­si­tion Leader, just com­ing out of the In­di­an Ar­rival cel­e­bra­tion, she was in a way push­ing for­ward that her name came from her an­ces­tors, where­as per­sons of oth­er racial her­itage may have lost their names and would have been giv­en names by the British and the colonis­ers and in that re­gard, the slave traders and slave mas­ters. From that per­spec­tive, I think it’s a his­tor­i­cal is­sue that we have. As to whether or not it is racist, I would not say it is racist but I would say that the leader of the Op­po­si­tion should have been a lit­tle bit more diplo­mat­ic in how she refers to per­sons of oth­er eth­nic her­itage,” Ra­goonath said.

But Ra­goonath said he was con­cerned about re­cent state­ments be­ing made on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms.

“I am over­ly con­cerned about some of those state­ments that come from the po­lit­i­cal plat­form, when they could be gen­er­alised in one way or an­oth­er, In the same way we would crit­i­cise oth­er politi­cians, politi­cians have to be mind­ful of their role in so­ci­ety and the im­por­tance that their words would car­ry to their lis­ten­ers there­after,” Ra­goonath said.

Asked to com­ment on a pe­ti­tion start­ed by econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran for Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­moval from Par­lia­ment, Ra­goonath said he does not be­lieve it will have the de­sired out­come.

“Peo­ple could make their calls for her to be re­moved but the fact is that she is an elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and if you are us­ing the pol­i­tics of the day, you will note that there is no room in the Con­sti­tu­tion, or even with­in the con­text of the Par­lia­ment, that can dis­ci­pline her by re­mov­ing her from the Par­lia­ment. The state­ment was not made in Par­lia­ment in the first in­stance, so she can­not be brought be­fore the Par­lia­ment Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee,” Ra­goonath said.

Two for­mer UNC min­is­ters al­so lent their voic­es to the out­cry over Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments.

For­mer min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said her state­ments un­der­scored why the UNC would re­main in Op­po­si­tion.

“Just as the se­lec­tion of Ramesh Per­sad Ma­haraj as chair­man of the In­ter­nal Elec­tions Com­mit­tee con­tin­ues to high­light Kam­la’s poor de­ci­sion mak­ing, so too is the lat­est call­ing of Camille’s name as a slave name,” Ma­haraj said.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment was “reck­less” in T&T’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety.

“This is the same Kam­la that spoke about a “black­man” not “blankman” in the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tions and aired a num­ber of racist ad­ver­tise­ments that de­pict Afro-Trinida­di­ans in a deroga­to­ry man­ner. How can Kam­la’s UNC hope to at­tract any sub­stan­tial po­ten­tial vot­er when there is this con­tin­u­ous racial un­der­tone on the plat­form of the UNC?” Ma­haraj asked.

He called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to is­sue an im­me­di­ate and “un­re­pen­tant” apol­o­gy and for every “In­di­an-based” or­gan­i­sa­tion to join in con­demn­ing her state­ments.

For­mer UNC Sen­a­tor Ra­bindra Moo­nan al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar, call­ing her state­ment “cal­lous, reck­less and mind­less­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble.”

He said she had de­stroyed what­ev­er good­will the “fledg­ling” UNC had. “Kam­la’s ref­er­ence to per­sons car­ry­ing the names of their slave mas­ters is mis­placed and lacks deco­rum and any com­mon sense. It is an af­front to all peo­ple, who are vic­tims of colo­nial times through no fault of their own. The fact that dur­ing slav­ery African peo­ple were stripped of their names, re­li­gions, and cul­ture is not some­thing to be di­min­ished on the al­tar of cheap pol­i­tics,” Moo­nan said.

He said the Op­po­si­tion leader caused em­bar­rass­ment to her sup­port­ers, adding T&T has prid­ed it­self in its mul­ti-eth­nic, mul­ti-cul­tur­al and mul­ti-re­li­gious peo­ple.

“Sad­ly, the drums of racial and cul­tur­al ha­tred have start­ed to beat loud­ly as these in­flam­ma­to­ry state­ments are de­void of any log­ic and are like­ly to in­flame pas­sions among the mind­less mass­es,” he said.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS