Alexander, Al-Rawi clash over AG’s ‘one per cent’ remarks

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der has de­fend­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s con­tro­ver­sial use of the term “one per cent” dur­ing Wednes­day’s de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of State of Emer­gency (SoE), ar­gu­ing that the phrase is glob­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with wealth and priv­i­lege rather than any spe­cif­ic eth­nic group.

Je­re­mie’s com­ments have trig­gered strong crit­i­cism from mem­bers of T&T’s Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, af­ter he warned that Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus would ex­tend to “those who de­scribe them­selves in per­cent­ages, such as the one per cent,” a phrase that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been linked to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud was among those con­demn­ing the re­marks, de­scrib­ing them as dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, hate­ful and racist, while call­ing on Je­re­mie to ex­er­cise greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in his pub­lic state­ments.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Alexan­der re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that Je­re­mie’s com­ments tar­get­ed the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty.

“I have Syr­i­an an­ces­try and un­for­tu­nate­ly, tag­ging the word one per cent to the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty hap­pened in a video that was done with An­tho­ny Bour­dain, and that went vi­ral on its own,” Alexan­der said.

“But glob­al­ly, the term one per cent refers to the top one per cent of the wealth­i­est peo­ple in a coun­try. That is why we are the 99 per cent as a move­ment.”

Alexan­der said the AG was re­fer­ring to long­stand­ing con­cerns about wealth con­cen­tra­tion and un­equal treat­ment un­der the law.

“In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have had, for quite some time, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and there has been a dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of law en­force­ment where wrong­do­ing is con­cerned, and I think that is what the AG is re­fer­ring to when he said cer­tain peo­ple have the keys to the city,” he said.

“I un­der­stand the point he was try­ing to make. He most­ly in­ferred that this is a warn­ing to those who would con­tem­plate tak­ing any ac­tion against the State that this time around, there would be no sep­a­rat­ing sheep from goat, that all who en­gage in any kind of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing will feel the full brunt of the law. And we, as Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans, have been ask­ing for that for a long, long, long, long time.”

Asked whether the word­ing used by the AG could have been in­ter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, Alexan­der main­tained there was noth­ing ob­jec­tion­able about the lan­guage.

“What word would you use? Rich­est? Wealth­i­est? At some point, every­body could claim every­thing,” he said.

He added, “I heard Ka­reem Mar­celle say­ing PNM peo­ple is the new ‘N’ word. I think we are at the dirty deep end of the ocean now. I don’t know what can you say and peo­ple wouldn’t claim and put their own mean­ing on. The re­al­i­ty is there are terms ac­cept­ed glob­al­ly and he used glob­al­ly ac­cept­ed terms and I don’t see any­thing wrong with that, speak­ing as a proud mem­ber of the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty.”

But Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, strong­ly dis­agreed with Alexan­der’s de­fence, in­sist­ing the AG’s com­ments could on­ly rea­son­ably be in­ter­pret­ed as a ref­er­ence to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty.

“The AG is a very pre­cise man, very ex­pe­ri­enced man. I lis­tened to his con­tri­bu­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

“He start­ed by read­ing the word­ing from Pe­ter George in an An­tho­ny Bour­dain in­ter­view. Af­ter he had done that, he then made ref­er­ences to one per cent own­er­ship of me­dia, which could on­ly be the Sab­ga fam­i­ly.

“If any­body in Trinidad and To­ba­go speaks plain­ly, the minute you say one per cent, you think the Arab com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, full stop.”

Al-Rawi dis­missed at­tempts to broad­en the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the phrase, ar­gu­ing that Je­re­mie’s com­ments amount­ed to an at­tack on an eth­nic mi­nor­i­ty group.

“The fee­ble at­tempt by the Prime Min­is­ter to al­lege there is a one per cent at­trib­ut­able to every­body in Trinidad and To­ba­go was a claw-back at­tempt to hide what, in my view, is a bla­tant state­ment against the Arab com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which is an eth­nic mi­nor­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“There is no se­cret that I am half Arab. My fa­ther is Iraqi, my moth­er is Tri­ni, and I view that state­ment as a di­rect state­ment to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

While stress­ing that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty should be pros­e­cut­ed re­gard­less of who is in­volved, Al-Rawi said pub­lic of­fi­cials must avoid lan­guage that could be per­ceived as dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

“If there is ev­i­dence of crime in this coun­try, deal with it,” he said.

“But you see mak­ing state­ments in Par­lia­ment in a vague, opaque sort of way where you have us guess­ing, I don’t buy that.”

Al-Rawi point­ed to leg­is­la­tion en­act­ed dur­ing his tenure as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, in­clud­ing un­ex­plained wealth laws and ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship mea­sures, ar­gu­ing that au­thor­i­ties al­ready pos­sess le­gal tools to pur­sue il­lic­it wealth.

He added: “There is no room for dis­crim­i­na­tion, there is no room for state­ments oth­er­wise and if you’re go­ing to ap­ply the law, you don’t pref­ace it in the man­ner in which it was said. I ex­pect more from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. He is a very ex­pe­ri­enced man.”

Mean­while, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish said he did not in­ter­pret Je­re­mie’s com­ments as of­fen­sive or tar­get­ed at any par­tic­u­lar eth­nic group.

“Let’s be hon­est with each oth­er, we know the group or the class of per­sons gen­er­al­ly re­ferred to as the one per cent,” Mc­Nish said.

“I do not think the AG was at­tack­ing that class of peo­ple di­rect­ly. I think the point he was try­ing to make, that I took from it, was lis­ten, crim­i­nals ex­ist on all lev­els of our so­ci­ety. So you can be from the up­per class, the rich and elite, that is not to say you are above the law. And the law will pur­sue you if there is ev­i­dence that you are en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. That’s how I took it.”