Political backlash after Rowley’s ‘jamette’ remark

Sto­ry by AKASH SAMA­ROO and RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley is trig­ger­ing sharp re­spons­es from gov­ern­ment min­is­ters af­ter he re­ferred to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a “jamette”.

Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath con­demned the com­ment as de­grad­ing and in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a for­mer head of gov­ern­ment.

“When a for­mer prime min­is­ter ad­dress­es the coun­try in this way, it is not strength. It is spite, vul­gar­i­ty and a com­plete ab­sence of de­cen­cy,” Padarath said in a state­ment.

He ar­gued that the re­mark went be­yond par­ti­san pol­i­tics and raised wider con­cerns about re­spect for women in pub­lic life.

“This is big­ger than pol­i­tics. Too many women in this coun­try al­ready en­dure dis­re­spect and hu­mil­i­a­tion, and in­stead of con­tribut­ing ma­tu­ri­ty or sub­stance, Dr Row­ley chose in­sult,” Padarath said.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal al­so fired back, us­ing equal­ly harsh lan­guage to de­scribe the for­mer prime min­is­ter.

Speak­ing to re­porters on Wednes­day, Mooni­lal said:

“Kei­th Row­ley re­mains a skunk. Whether he is wear­ing a jack­et and tie, short pants, he has al­ways been a skunk and to make these com­ments yet again about the prime min­is­ter is dis­grace­ful, un­for­tu­nate and vile.”

Dr Row­ley made the ini­tial re­mark dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at his Diego Mar­tin home while re­spond­ing to al­le­ga­tions raised in Par­lia­ment by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar about the fi­nanc­ing of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s head­quar­ters, Bal­isi­er House.

Dur­ing that ap­pear­ance, Row­ley said:

“I want to say to Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to­day, I told this coun­try be­fore that you’re a jamette.”

He re­peat­ed the de­scrip­tion while chal­leng­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­vide ev­i­dence sup­port­ing her claim that the PNM build­ing was fi­nanced with drug mon­ey.

“If they can’t come in front of me and show an io­ta of ev­i­dence to sup­port that al­le­ga­tion, I say again that we are un­for­tu­nate to have a jamette as the prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go. On­ly a jamette would make such a state­ment with­out pro­vid­ing a mod­icum of proof or truth,” Dr Row­ley said.

The ex­change fol­lows re­marks made by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, where she ac­cused the PNM lead­er­ship of ben­e­fit­ing from “drug mafia fi­nanciers” and de­scribed the par­ty’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters as “a grave­stone to drug mon­ey, pae­dophil­ia, and theft.”

Dr Row­ley re­ject­ed the al­le­ga­tion and in­sist­ed the par­ty’s head­quar­ters was fund­ed through con­tri­bu­tions from mem­bers and sup­port­ers.

“If you could pay $10, pay $10. If you could pay $15, $20, some mem­bers helped with that. We had mem­bers who were wealthy and well-off who said, ‘I’ll help you with that’,” he said.

The ex­change has fur­ther es­ca­lat­ed ten­sions in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, with both sides trad­ing ac­cu­sa­tions and per­son­al at­tacks over the con­tro­ver­sy.