Ac­cu­sa­tions of bul­ly­ing have resur­faced in Par­lia­ment, with a mem­ber of the Op­po­si­tion bold­ly claim­ing that a col­league has utilised the Bud­get de­bate to do just that.

Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, la­belled one of five dis­si­dents by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), yes­ter­day ex­pressed her dis­may over con­tra­dic­to­ry com­ments made by Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath on Mon­day.

While con­tribut­ing to the Bud­get de­bate, Padarath re­ferred to the death of stu­dent Jay­den Lalchan, who end­ed his life on Oc­to­ber 3 af­ter al­leged­ly be­ing bul­lied at school. It was then he said he had al­so been a vic­tim of bul­ly­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Ac­cord­ing to Haynes-Al­leyne, Padarath’s ac­tions were hyp­o­crit­i­cal, as he cham­pi­oned Jay­den’s cause while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly en­gag­ing in be­hav­iour that con­tributed to the very is­sues lead­ing to the boy’s trag­ic death.

“This has been a very unique de­bate for me be­cause, out­side of the reg­u­lar pi­cong, we have al­so faced some pi­cong from our own side, and that has been very unique,” she said.

She added, “I sat here and lis­tened as a col­league be­gan a con­tri­bu­tion talk­ing about A-teams and B-teams, and end­ed a con­tri­bu­tion talk­ing about a very se­ri­ous, very im­por­tant na­tion­al is­sue on bul­ly­ing. That same col­league spent a lot of time this year talk­ing about who was ‘no­body’, ‘neemakharam’, etcetera. So, from the be­gin­ning of your con­tri­bu­tion to the end of a 55-minute con­tri­bu­tion, you could find your­self dis­agree­ing with your­self on the things that you have done. You have to un­der­stand that peo­ple are watch­ing. That is not A-team be­hav­iour!”

Haynes-Al­leyne al­so cau­tioned her UNC col­leagues and oth­er MPs against blind­ly sup­port­ing their par­ty’s phi­los­o­phy if it does not ad­vance the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“If your loy­al­ty to your par­ty su­per­sedes your loy­al­ty to the coun­try that has pro­vid­ed us every­thing that we have, then you are not mak­ing the dif­fer­ence you think you are mak­ing. If you do not re­alise that a po­lit­i­cal par­ty is mere­ly a ve­hi­cle for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and if the ve­hi­cle you are in is not tak­ing you where you want to go, you can fix it or you can move on!” she said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Padarath for com­ment, and he re­mained un­apolo­getic, as­sert­ing that Haynes-Al­leyne has con­flat­ed bul­ly­ing with UNC re­jec­tion.

“The Mem­ber is play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness, which I am cer­tain every­one sees through. Bul­ly­ing is when Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment tell you deroga­to­ry things about your fam­i­ly, when they call you chil­dren deroga­to­ry names, laugh­ing at your clothes and call­ing it table­cloth, call­ing males princess. Where was Ani­ta Haynes when all those things were hap­pen­ing?” he ques­tioned.

Padarath al­so ar­gued that be­ing called un­grate­ful is not bul­ly­ing and took is­sue with Haynes-Al­leyne’s ref­er­ence to Jay­den Lalchan.

“It is shame­ful that in­stead of ad­vo­cat­ing for young Jay­den and oth­ers, Miss Haynes is triv­i­al­is­ing a se­ri­ous is­sue in or­der to score cheap po­lit­i­cal points while head­ing to­ward po­lit­i­cal ob­scu­ri­ty,” he stat­ed.

Dur­ing the bud­get de­bate in 2015, then Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith re­ferred to Padarath as the ‘princess of Princes Town’, a re­mark for which he lat­er apol­o­gised to Padarath for mak­ing. Smith lat­er apol­o­gised to the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, amidst a storm of crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia. This in­ci­dent prompt­ed Padarath to de­clare that he would not be bul­lied.

At the time, Haynes-Al­leyne was not a mem­ber of par­lia­ment but served as the UNC’s PRO.

‘Not my last bud­get’

Mean­while, Haynes-Al­leyne ad­dressed spec­u­la­tion about her fu­ture in Par­lia­ment, stat­ing, “No, I do not be­lieve this will be my last bud­get con­tri­bu­tion. You do not know what time will hold, no­body here. No­body here can say what will hap­pen and how it will hap­pen but when I en­tered the po­lit­i­cal land­scape, I did so with the one un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ple that I will do my best to serve Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

At the start of the first ses­sion of the 13th Par­lia­ment, Haynes-Al­leyne and Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles were moved from their seats near par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to a low­er po­si­tion on the Op­po­si­tion bench, ad­ja­cent to their three col­leagues Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir.