KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

While hun­dreds of pa­trons were ex­cit­ed to meet and greet Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the Di­vali Na­gar on Thurs­day evening, many oth­ers vis­it­ed the site just to ex­press their dis­gust with what they de­scribed as her lack of lead­er­ship.

They al­so called on her to apol­o­gise for “dis­re­spect­ing Hin­dus” af­ter she re­cent­ly said the at­tacks and acts of van­dal­ism at Hin­du tem­ples should not be re­gard­ed as hate crimes. In­stead, she la­belled the in­ci­dents as crimes of op­por­tu­ni­ty and van­dal­ism.

Her com­ments were in stark con­trast to those of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, which runs many tem­ples and schools across the coun­try, as she called on them to “bring ev­i­dence of re­li­gious ha­tred.” The Ma­ha Sab­ha even­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ed its ev­i­dence to back up its claims.

On Thurs­day evening, sev­er­al peo­ple said to be sup­port­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) lined up out­side the Na­gar to protest against Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly one dozen peo­ple had plac­ards which read, “Kalma dis­re­spect­ed Hin­dus” and “Keep­ing back progress los­ing elec­tions let­ting Row­ley get away with every­thing.”

Oth­ers had plac­ards call­ing for her to step down as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

An­oth­er plac­ard read, “Self­ish Kam­la must re­sign now”.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader was ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al of her MPs, sen­a­tors and coun­cil­lors at the Di­vali Na­gar and ap­peared un­fazed by the protest. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was giv­en a to­ken of ap­pre­ci­a­tion by the NCIC while at the Na­gar.