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Friday, May 30, 2025

PM, Ministers condemn Kamla’s ‘seditious’ coup comments

by

Renuka Singh
1446 days ago
20210614

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was yes­ter­day round­ly crit­i­cised by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and sev­er­al fac­tions with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment for her “in­cite­ful” words the day be­fore.

In a re­sponse to Row­ley’s apol­o­gy to the na­tion for the flopped mass vac­ci­na­tion plan, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the Gov­ern­ment was sow­ing “seeds of civ­il un­rest are be­ing plant­ed and wa­tered.”

In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, Row­ley asked whether Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ap­peal­ing for a “1990-style in­sur­rec­tion to be the re­sponse of those cit­i­zens who are un­der­go­ing the hard­ships that many are cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing”.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s words was “a most dan­ger­ous, dam­ag­ing and un­pa­tri­ot­ic ob­struc­tion in this time of our na­tion­al strug­gle in these pan­dem­ic times”.

“Such a state­ment could eas­i­ly be mis­un­der­stood or viewed as ac­cept­able en­cour­age­ment by any un­for­tu­nates who may think that this thought is an ac­cept­able re­sponse,” he said.

Row­ley ques­tioned whether Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­lieved that she could ben­e­fit from such a de­vel­op­ment but said that any such ac­tions would be “very cost­ly and detri­men­tal to the en­tire na­tion”.

“Clear­ly that is not any of her con­cern,” he said.

“Equal­ly to be round­ly con­demned is her re­lent­less at­tack on the pro­fes­sion­al pub­lic ser­vants in the health care sec­tor whom she iden­ti­fied, by name, and sub­ject­ed them to her warped and dis­gust­ing analy­sis,” the PM said.

“As Prime Min­is­ter, charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of steer­ing this na­tion to a safe place in this storm, I ap­peal to the Op­po­si­tion Leader to search with­in her­self for any mod­icum of de­cen­cy which would di­rect her to leave the pub­lic pro­fes­sion­als out of her po­lit­i­cal des­per­a­tion,” he said.

AG, oth­er Min­is­ters de­fend health­care pro­fes­sion­als

Al-Rawi al­so took to so­cial me­dia to share his dis­dain.

“It is fair to say that the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion should ac­tive­ly seek to con­demn any sen­ti­ments of in­vi­ta­tion for un­rest cal­cu­lat­ed­ly plant­ed in the minds of our pop­u­la­tion and should im­me­di­ate­ly sub­ject her­self to clar­i­fi­ca­tion in an open fo­rum, where she can apol­o­gise to the na­tion for any harm caused,” he said.

Al-Rawi said that equal­ly alarm­ing, is the po­si­tion where Per­sad-Bisses­sar “has failed to pub­licly take any step to stop the sav­agery and defama­tion of hard-work­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the pub­lic ser­vice at the Min­istry of Health”

“It is rep­re­hen­si­ble and cow­ard­ly for Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar to wit­ness the UNC talk­ing heads and mass­es alike make and spread li­bel­lous and dam­ag­ing state­ments of our Heath ex­perts and to do ab­solute­ly noth­ing to pub­licly stop it,” he said.

Al-Rawi said that Per­sad-Bisses­sar had “re­duced” her­self to one-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion “where she ap­pears and dis­ap­pears with­out ever sub­ject­ing her­self to the dis­ci­pline and trans­paren­cy of open ques­tions and an­swers”.

“A sim­ple mes­sage to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar - Stop it now! It’s just plain­ly wrong,” Al-Rawi said.

Young al­so weighed in on the is­sue, ac­cus­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar of” dog-whistling” and a “dis­gust­ing low-lev­el at­tack”.

He said that Per­sad Bisses­sar was once again seek­ing to re­main rel­e­vant but said her state­ment was “dis­taste­ful and de­signed to, in­ter alia, en­cour­age crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

“For Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar to dog whis­tle and re­fer to 1990’s events is an all-time low, even for her in her abyss of dark­ness. I al­so con­demn the Leader of Op­po­si­tion’s at­tacks on our out­stand­ing pub­lic health care pro­fes­sion­als who have done amaz­ing and ex­em­plary ser­vice to Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” he said.

“I stand res­olute­ly in pro­tec­tion and sup­port of the CMO and his team of health care pro­fes­sion­als who have sought to pro­tect this Na­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” Young said.

“I call on the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and mem­bers of the UNC to im­me­di­ate­ly cease and de­sist from at­tack­ing the pub­lic health care pro­fes­sion­als lead by the CMO,” he said.

Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so weighed in call­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “less than sub­tle call for civ­il un­rest which is mis­chief-mak­ing that bor­ders on sedi­tion.”

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were shared by the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the D’Abadie/O’Meara con­stituen­cy and the PNM Youth League.

Con­tentious ex­cerpts from the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s June 12 state­ment

Most dan­ger­ous­ly, he (Row­ley) clear­ly is not go­ing to make any re­al changes that are nec­es­sary to save lives. He is keep­ing the same failed med­ical team now turned pro­pa­gan­da team of Deyals­ingh, Paras­ram, Ab­dool Richards, Hinds and Trot­man. These peo­ple have been in charge for over 15 months and led us in­to this dis­as­ter of over 600 deaths. Con­tin­u­ing with them in charge is dead­ly, and amounts to pre­med­i­tat­ed, state-sanc­tioned mur­der.

It is atro­cious that the Gov­ern­ment and their per­son­nel con­tin­ue to use “it could be worse” or “it is im­prov­ing” as their de­fence when the fact re­mains that cas­es con­tin­ue by the hun­dreds each day while hun­dreds have died.

Row­ley must re­al­ize that as we con­tin­ue to lose lives on a dai­ly ba­sis, as busi­ness and liveli­hoods are de­stroyed and worse, as in­no­cent el­der­ly cit­i­zens may have been in­fect­ed at that sham of a roll­out, the seeds of civ­il un­rest are be­ing plant­ed and wa­tered.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple are with­out work, un­able to pro­vide food for their fam­i­lies, un­able to pay bills, or un­able to pay their rents. A virus of pover­ty is al­so sweep­ing our na­tion with no plan in place to re­sus­ci­tate our econ­o­my. Row­ley must ac­cept help from stake­hold­ers and make changes to his failed team. We can­not have a 1990 re­peat.


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