SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

For­mer deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Nafeesa Mo­hammed, who first backed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in 2020 af­ter decades in the PNM, is dou­bling down ahead of to­mor­row’s gen­er­al elec­tion—de­clar­ing she will not vote for the par­ty due to its record of weak gov­er­nance.

“I can’t wait to vote. My fin­ger is my weapon, and I am not vot­ing for the PNM. And I make no bones about that,” Mo­hammed said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian on Wednes­day.

Mo­hammed blast­ed the PNM and the par­ty’s leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s han­dling of the repa­tri­a­tion of 97 na­tion­als locked in camps in Syr­ia and Iraq. She said a com­mit­ment was giv­en by Row­ley to bring these peo­ple home, but two years lat­er, they are still lan­guish­ing in camps in the two con­flict zones and liv­ing in in­hu­mane con­di­tions.

Mo­hammed will throw her sup­port be­hind UNC’s Barataria/San Juan can­di­date Sad­dam Ho­sein again. She first backed him in the 2020 when he won the seat with 8,300 votes. His main con­tender, the PNM’s Ja­son Williams, re­ceived 7,240 votes.

Re­s­e­lect­ed to fight the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy again for the UNC, Ho­sein will come up against PNM’s can­di­date Dr Muham­mad Yunus Ibra­ham, who is Mo­hammed’s sec­ond cousin.

Mo­hammed watched Ibrahim grow up as a lit­tle boy in front of her eyes.

“I am not go­ing to vote for him,” she ad­mit­ted.

“His fam­i­ly will dis­like me for that. But I have seen the hypocrisy. I am urg­ing every sin­gle cit­i­zen to go out there and ex­er­cise their fran­chise to re­store good gov­er­nance to our coun­try. This coun­try is in a mess.”

Mo­hammed came from a fam­i­ly steeped in pol­i­tics.

Her late un­cle, Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed, was one of the found­ing mem­bers of the PNM.

He was al­so one of the longest-serv­ing MPs in Par­lia­ment.

Like her un­cle, Mo­hammed gave many years of her life to the PNM–a par­ty she be­lieved in, trust­ed and was com­mit­ted to while she worked as a sen­a­tor and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

How­ev­er, in 2018, Mo­hammed, who served as a le­gal ad­vis­er to Row­ley, was fired fol­low­ing a Face­book post where she took is­sue with the ar­rest of her rel­a­tive Tariq Mo­hammed.

Mo­hammed re­signed from the PNM in 2020, cit­ing in­jus­tices in­flict­ed on mem­bers of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and her­self by the Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment.

In her res­ig­na­tion state­ment, Mo­hammed said the coun­try did not de­serve a bul­ly as prime min­is­ter and that she would con­tin­ue to stand for fair­ness, jus­tice, and equal­i­ty.

When Row­ley ap­point­ed for­mer house speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed to head the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee in 2023, Mo­hammed saw a ray of hope for the 72 chil­dren and 25 women who had been locked in camps in Syr­ia and Iraq.

On Mon­day, Mo­hammed said she be­came en­raged when she heard Nizam call for Mus­lims to with­hold their votes un­less Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young or Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made a firm com­mit­ment to repa­tri­ate na­tion­als who re­main strand­ed in these refugee camps.

In re­sponse to Nizam’s state­ment, Young said the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing the nec­es­sary work to deal with the sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing the women and chil­dren stuck in the camps in Syr­ia, while Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called for peo­ple to vote for the UNC and the repa­tri­a­tion sit­u­a­tion would be fixed.

She said there was a group of Mus­lim peo­ple who have been “do­ing the mis­chief be­hind the scenes for years and have re­mained silent while these women and chil­dren have been suf­fer­ing”.

On Tues­day, Mo­hammed al­so post­ed on her Face­book page that since No­vem­ber 26, 2019, Young has been talk­ing about repa­tri­at­ing our cit­i­zens.

“It has been more than six years, and he has failed mis­er­ably, and so has the PNM Gov­ern­ment,” Mo­hammed stat­ed in her post.

She said it was re­gret­table that Nizam “has been used by the Gov­ern­ment to give the im­pres­sion that they will repa­tri­ate these chil­dren and women when the po­lit­i­cal will to do so has not been ev­i­dent.”

She said the time had come to stop be­liev­ing in these promis­es.

“This is the time to change the Gov­ern­ment and give Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar a chance be­cause of the com­mit­ment they will help to repa­tri­ate.”

Mo­hammed said what she had been wit­ness­ing were acts of dis­crim­i­na­tion and Is­lam­o­pho­bia against cit­i­zens.

Hav­ing ex­tend­ed a will­ing­ness to work with the Gov­ern­ment for these women and chil­dren to re­turn home, Mo­hammed said she was dis­re­gard­ed.

“I have tried hard to keep the pol­i­tics out of this is­sue. If you know how my blood is boil­ing for the elec­tion, and the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty needs to be sen­si­ble to go out and vote.”

Mo­hammed es­ti­mat­ed there were more than 150,000 Mus­lims in T&T based on old da­ta she worked with.

“There was a re­search pa­per I did. And in 1998, I found a doc­u­ment in the UWI li­brary that gave a break­down of the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.”

In the Barataria/San Juan con­stituen­cy, Mo­hammed said there were rough­ly 2,000 el­i­gi­ble Mus­lim vot­ers.

That fig­ure, she said, was con­ser­v­a­tive.

The con­stituen­cy has a vot­ing pop­u­la­tion of more than 25,000.

On Thurs­day, Nizam was con­tact­ed by the Sun­day Guardian for a com­ment, but he re­fused to speak on the is­sue.