Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says is­sues of race and slav­ery are be­ing used to by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ap­peal to the emo­tions of Afro-Trinida­di­ans in this coun­try to dis­cour­age them from vot­ing.

He made the com­ment dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Ma­son Hall on Tues­day night, as he re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tions that the PNM was us­ing race bait­ing as part of their cur­rent tac­tics.

“As Op­po­si­tion Leader I ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to the Di­vali Na­gar site and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her cronies re­fused to at­tend the Na­gar be­cause I was in­vit­ed to it,” Row­ley said as he gave an ex­am­ple of the type of be­hav­iour the UNC ex­hib­it­ed to­wards him as an Afro-Trinida­di­an leader.

Ad­dress­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s race bait­ing al­le­ga­tion di­rect­ly, he asked, “Kam­la is that you?”

Re­call­ing an in­vi­ta­tion one year to at­tend the an­nu­al Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas, Row­ley said Per­sad Bisses­sar and some mem­bers of her par­ty had re­fused to at­tend while he was there.

He added that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, “who now sud­den­ly is the de­fend­er of African peo­ple in this coun­try, she sud­den­ly dis­cov­er that slave mas­ters didn’t give us noth­ing when they put us off the land and she is go­ing to make sure that black peo­ple get land in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned the gen­uine­ness of her state­ment, ask­ing whether her gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted for­mer Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed lands eq­ui­tably.

“For five years she over­saw land dis­tri­b­u­tion in Ca­roni, she must tell us how much of the land she gave to black peo­ple.”

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the Op­po­si­tion leader is al­so us­ing the com­mon stereo­type of the African male be­ing dri­ven by sex and un­fit to lead. He re­called that when he was in Op­po­si­tion, UNC MP Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin came to Par­lia­ment and “ac­cused me and my fa­ther of rape.”

He al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of “of­fer­ing mon­ey left, right and cen­tre” to not vote, as that will re­sult in the PNM los­ing the elec­tions.

“If that is the type of pol­i­tics that is so trans­par­ent in this coun­try now and if you can be en­cour­aged to not ex­er­cise your de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right so that some­body else can win, so that they can come and thief out the trea­sury again.”

He called on all par­ents to en­cour­age their chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in the elec­toral process, as many of our fore­fa­thers paid a heavy price for the priv­i­lege.