Minister Mohit condemns Rowley’s comments on Prime Minister

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Van­dana Mo­hit, has con­demned com­ments made by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to­wards cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Min­is­ter Mo­hit de­scribed the state­ments as “vile, de­grad­ing and deeply of­fen­sive”.

The re­marks were made dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Tues­day, where Row­ley re­ferred to the Prime Min­is­ter as a “jamette”.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued Thurs­day, Min­is­ter Mo­hit said:

“This state­ment is not mere­ly a po­lit­i­cal at­tack. It is an at­tack on wom­an­hood it­self.”

She added: “It is un­equiv­o­cal­ly stat­ed that such lan­guage, par­tic­u­lar­ly from a for­mer prime min­is­ter, rep­re­sents a dan­ger­ous re­gres­sion in­to a cul­ture of misog­y­ny, dis­re­spect and moral bank­rupt­cy.”

Min­is­ter Mo­hit stat­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar stands not on­ly as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the na­tion, but al­so as a sym­bol of re­silience, dig­ni­ty and achieve­ment for women across the coun­try.

She called the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of such lan­guage by some­one who once held the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter “alarm­ing”, and added:

“When those en­trust­ed with na­tion­al lead­er­ship re­sort to per­son­al at­tacks steeped in gen­dered in­sult, it sig­nals a pro­found ero­sion of val­ues and a be­tray­al of pub­lic trust.”

Min­is­ter Mo­hit urged “all right-think­ing cit­i­zens” re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, “to re­ject this brand of pol­i­tics root­ed in in­sult and di­vi­sion.”

She as­sured the women of Trinidad and To­ba­go that the Gov­ern­ment stands firm­ly in de­fence of the dig­ni­ty of women every­where, and will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for, pro­tect and em­pow­er women at every lev­el of so­ci­ety.