Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has joined the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in con­demn­ing the as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on for­mer US Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump. Row­ley pub­lished a state­ment on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, say­ing he was join­ing US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and the US House Speak­er, Mike John­son, in con­demn­ing the vi­o­lence aimed at Trump and en­dan­ger­ing the pub­lic at large.

He wrote, “I too agree that there is ab­solute­ly no place or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for any as­pect of vi­o­lence in the po­lit­i­cal process and en­vi­ron­ment of a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.”

On Sat­ur­day, a 20-year-old gun­man shot at the for­mer US Pres­i­dent as he start­ed to speak at a cam­paign ral­ly in Penn­syl­va­nia. Trump was grazed on the ear, while a sup­port­er was killed and two oth­ers in­jured. The gun­man was even­tu­al­ly shot and killed by Se­cret Ser­vice agents.

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “Those who might di­rect­ly or in­ad­ver­tent­ly fos­ter and or en­cour­age this out­come should give deep re­flec­tion as to their com­mit­ment to democ­ra­cy as we all cham­pi­on it to the di­ver­si­ty of our pop­u­la­tions.”

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Dr Amery Browne, con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day he was in touch with US Am­bas­sador, Can­dace Bond, in the af­ter­math of the at­tempt on the for­mer pres­i­dent’s life.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Browne wrote, “T&T con­demns all forms of po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence, and I was sad­dened to see that at­ten­dees at a cam­paign ral­ly in Penn­syl­va­nia, USA, were killed and in­jured, in­clud­ing the in­jury to can­di­date Don­ald Trump. I was di­rect­ly in touch with US Am­bas­sador Bond yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day) evening, and ex­pressed my sym­pa­thies and best wish­es in the trou­bling cir­cum­stances that have be­fall­en the US pres­i­den­tial cam­paign sea­son.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so spoke out against the in­ci­dent.

“As Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly con­demn the as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on for­mer US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“I wish for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump and his fam­i­ly God’s bless­ings, strength and pro­tec­tion. Just as we mourn and sym­pa­thise with those mur­dered in our own coun­try over this week­end, I al­so ex­press my deep­est con­do­lences and sym­pa­thies for the spec­ta­tor who died and al­so for the oth­er two spec­ta­tors who re­main crit­i­cal­ly in­jured, ac­cord­ing to cur­rent re­ports.”

MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, warned there are lessons to be learned here in T&T as cam­paign­ing for the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions be­gins.

“I think the im­por­tant les­son here is a les­son for lead­er­ship. Those of us in lead­er­ship po­si­tions ought to main­tain a cer­tain deco­rum, a cer­tain stan­dard in our con­duct, and we ought not to be us­ing lan­guage to in­flame and cre­ate ac­ri­mo­ny and in­cite per­sons to ag­gres­sion and vi­o­lence,” he said.

He went fur­ther in say­ing de­spite the Caribbean hav­ing a his­to­ry of peace­ful po­lit­i­cal process­es, this coun­try can­not low­er its guard to fun­da­men­tal­ist el­e­ments.

“We need to man­age our so­ci­ety in a way that we re­duce con­flict, we deal in a very ma­ture way with dis­putes and dis­agree­ments and at all times main­tain our democ­ra­cy and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic po­si­tions re­gard­less of per­son­al­i­ties and dif­fi­cul­ties,” he added.

It is a per­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath shared. He said while T&T isn’t known to be an ide­o­log­i­cal so­ci­ety, the coun­try can­not ig­nore the at­tempt­ed as­sas­si­na­tion of Trump.

He said, “We have to be on our guard all the time as to what is hap­pen­ing around the world and what may be trans­ferred here by some peo­ple who may think it’s an ex­am­ple of that we have seen out­side and we can ap­ply it to Trinidad.”

He said the politi­cians are the ones who have to “tem­per man­age their mem­ber­ship” in a man­ner which keeps the ten­sion be­tween the po­lit­i­cal par­ties down.

And, the Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Browne al­so con­demned the at­tack on Trump, de­cry­ing “all forms of vi­o­lence against po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.”

And for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and MP, Jack Warn­er, who has been friends with Trump for over 15 years, “I’m hap­py he has sur­vived. The sit­u­a­tion al­so shows us oth­er things. This part of US cul­ture has seen at­tempts made on the lives of oth­er pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates be­fore and of course the well known sit­u­a­tion in 1981 when then US Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan was shot. So I’m not sur­prised Trump is now a vic­tim so to speak.”

Warn­er, who al­so had an apart­ment at Trump Tow­er on the same floor as the for­mer pres­i­dent added, “It al­so shows that the US is no worse than T&T. On­ly time will tell whether this pat­tern of vi­o­lence will con­tin­ue un­til the US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in No­vem­ber.”