BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice’s (MSJ) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and can­di­date for Fyz­abad, Rad­ha­ka Gual­bance, has claimed that she was phys­i­cally as­sault­ed by a man pos­ing as a sup­port­er of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) while on the cam­paign trail.

She has re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day morn­ing, Gual­bance claimed an el­der­ly man tailed her and hurled ver­bal in­sults, be­fore even­tu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ing her while on a walk­a­bout last Thurs­day in Fyz­abad.

Gual­bance said she be­lieved she was sin­gled out be­cause she was a fe­male, stat­ing that the man did not at­tack her male com­rades on the walk­a­bout.

“An el­der­ly man stopped his ve­hi­cle in the cen­tre of the road, jumped out of the ve­hi­cle, hurl­ing in­sults at me, be­fore call­ing on the con­stituent by name I was speak­ing with, to chase me out and not to deal with me....and that he was a UNC and want­ed to en­sure that we did not come here to spilt the votes for his par­ty, to al­low the PNM back in­to pow­er,” Gual­bance said.

She said both she and the con­stituent, al­so a woman, ig­nored the man who even­tu­al­ly got back in­to his ve­hi­cle and left af­ter caus­ing a traf­fic pile up.

She said that while at a vis­it to an­oth­er’s con­stituent’s place at Berridge Trace, Dow Vil­lage, Fyz­abad, where there was a small gath­er­ing to wel­come her, she re­alised the man was stalk­ing her.

A for­mer teacher at the Siparia Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, Gual­bance said the man parked his ve­hi­cle close to the con­stituent’s fence, again call­ing on them to chase her while stat­ing that Gual­bance was a “dan­ger­ous woman who came to the area to split the vote and sab­o­tage the UNC’s chances of be­com­ing the next Gov­ern­ment in of­fice”.

“I felt a lit­tle un­com­fort­able now be­cause he was now on my trail. He was not even at­tack­ing the oth­er mem­bers that were fur­ther up the street, which he passed. He came to the gate where he knew I was,” Gual­bance re­lat­ed.

She said she pro­ceed­ed to leave to re­join her com­rades who were not too dis­tant away, but the man who was parked a mere three feet from the con­stituent’s fence al­leged­ly grabbed her arm.

She claimed, “He snatched my arm and pulled me and de­mand­ed, $300 if he has to vote for me be­cause that is what the UNC would give.”

She said she man­aged to strug­gle her arm away from the man’s grip adding that it was at this in­stance one of her com­rades, on notic­ing what was tran­spir­ing, in­ter­vened to find out if she was al­right.

Gual­bance said though she com­mu­ni­cat­ed to her com­rade that she was okay, she felt men­tal­ly shak­en, as she nev­er ex­pect­ed a phys­i­cal at­tack.

Ex­plain­ing she had nev­er been on the front­line in a po­lit­i­cal bat­tle, as her role usu­al­ly fell in that of a cam­paign man­ag­er, Gual­bance said the ex­pe­ri­ence shook her to the core.

“Ver­bal, I could deal with that, yuh could come with yuh cut­lass by yuh gate if yuh want­ed, but to hold me by my arm and pull at me. And that is how some men treat our women in this coun­try—with no re­spect,” ar­gued Gual­bance.

She added: “We must not al­low this and pol­i­tics must not over­take us like this.

“Some­thing is not right when you are so com­mit­ted to a par­ty you are will­ing to be­come vi­o­lent. At the end of the day, this is Trinidad and we are all Trinida­di­ans, re­gard­less of the par­ty of choice,” said Gual­bance.

Gual­bance said she sub­se­quent­ly made an of­fi­cial re­port to the Fyz­abad Po­lice Sta­tion af­ter fil­ing her nom­i­na­tion last Fri­day. She said the re­port had since been trans­ferred to the Oropouche Po­lice Sta­tion that was at­tend­ing to the mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN), Adri­ana, San­drine-Rat­tan for com­ment on the al­leged at­tack on Gual­bance, giv­en that she be­lieved she was tar­get­ed be­cause of her gen­der.

San­drine-Rat­tan said the or­gan­i­sa­tion strong­ly con­demned the at­tack and added that it would is­sue a state­ment lat­er this week, urg­ing par­ties to con­duct their cam­paigns with re­spect and de­void of per­son­al hu­mil­i­a­tion and emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal ha­rass­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to women.