Phillip under fire for social media attack on female activist

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der has re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that his re­cent so­cial me­dia at­tack on ac­tivist Suzette Louwe was deroga­to­ry or amount­ed to an at­tack on women, even as crit­i­cism of his con­duct con­tin­ues to in­ten­si­fy.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes amid an es­ca­lat­ing pub­lic feud be­tween Alexan­der and the so­cial me­dia ac­tivist, which has now sparked de­bate over the stan­dards ex­pect­ed of pub­lic of­fice hold­ers.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der de­nied his com­ments crossed the line from po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism to per­son­al at­tacks, or that they were in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns over ref­er­ences in his now-delet­ed Face­book post to al­leged in­ti­mate pho­tographs and re­marks about Louwe’s fam­i­ly and med­ical cir­cum­stances, Alexan­der said, “That is ab­solute­ly un­true. At no point did I say that I was in pos­ses­sion of any such im­ages. If re­quired, I will re­veal the names of the per­sons who made the in­for­ma­tion aware to me, in­clud­ing a se­nior state of­fi­cial.

“Suzette Louwe has been at­tack­ing per­sons in pub­lic life in the worst way, and my post sug­gest­ed to her that some­one who lives in a house made of glass is the last per­son to be hurl­ing stones. If any­thing I said is defam­a­to­ry, she has re­dress through the courts and I look for­ward to re­spond­ing to any re­quests for in­for­ma­tion that may then be trig­gered.”

When asked di­rect­ly whether he be­lieved his post was deroga­to­ry, Alexan­der replied, “Ab­solute­ly not.”

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from a Face­book post made by Alexan­der ear­li­er this week, which has since been delet­ed. In it, he made a se­ries of per­son­al al­le­ga­tions against Louwe, in­clud­ing claims re­gard­ing al­leged in­ti­mate pho­tographs, her em­ploy­ment, her mar­riage and com­ments ref­er­enc­ing the con­cep­tion of her chil­dren.

The post has since drawn wide­spread crit­i­cism on­line.

Among those con­demn­ing Alexan­der’s re­marks was a self-de­scribed sup­port­er of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC, whose Face­book re­sponse has been wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia.

The in­di­vid­ual said she was “fed up and to­tal­ly dis­gust­ed” with Alexan­der’s con­duct, ar­gu­ing that while she was not a sup­port­er of Louwe, the min­is­ter’s com­ments had “crossed a line and de­serve uni­ver­sal con­dem­na­tion.”

The post ac­cused Alexan­der of mak­ing re­marks that ap­peared to threat­en the re­lease of sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it ma­te­r­i­al, tar­get­ing Louwe’s chil­dren and weapon­is­ing what the writer de­scribed as pri­vate med­ical mat­ters. It al­so called on the UNC hi­er­ar­chy to re­move Alexan­der from of­fice and urged the par­ty’s Women’s League, sup­port­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic to pub­licly con­demn such be­hav­iour.

The au­thor ar­gued that women should not be­come “col­lat­er­al dam­age in po­lit­i­cal war­fare” and that fam­i­lies and per­son­al med­ical mat­ters should not be used as po­lit­i­cal weapons.

Guardian Me­dia has sought a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC Women’s League yes­ter­day but no re­spons­es were re­ceived up to press time.

Mean­while, Louwe has al­so launched an on­line pe­ti­tion ti­tled “Hold Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der ac­count­able for his mis­con­duct.”

The pe­ti­tion al­leges that Alexan­der has, over sev­er­al years, en­gaged in racial pro­fil­ing, tar­get­ed var­i­ous eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties and re­peat­ed­ly used his so­cial me­dia plat­forms to de­mean women. It fur­ther claims that de­spite fac­ing sev­er­al defama­tion law­suits, his con­duct has con­tin­ued unchecked and calls for a re­view of his suit­abil­i­ty to serve as a min­is­ter, in­clud­ing ap­pro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. As yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the pe­ti­tion had at­tract­ed more than 800 sig­na­tures.

But Alexan­der has re­spond­ed with a pe­ti­tion of his own ti­tled “Tell Suzette mind her busi­ness.” In the pe­ti­tion, he ac­cus­es Louwe of crit­i­cis­ing T&T and its po­lit­i­cal lead­ers while liv­ing abroad, ar­gu­ing that she has used her plat­form to un­der­mine those work­ing for the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment rather than of­fer­ing con­struc­tive so­lu­tions. The pe­ti­tion urges Louwe to shift “from crit­i­cism to col­lab­o­ra­tion” and “from neg­a­tiv­i­ty to pos­i­tiv­i­ty.”

By yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Alexan­der’s pe­ti­tion had re­ceived near­ly 300 sig­na­tures.

An­a­lyst: Know when to stop

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed yes­ter­day said the con­tro­ver­sy high­lights a broad­er de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal dis­course, warn­ing that politi­cians, com­men­ta­tors and ac­tivists alike need to recog­nise when pub­lic ex­changes have gone too far.

“As a so­ci­ety, putting aside the cul­ture of pol­i­tics, we have to know when to stop,” Mo­hammed said.

“There has to be a line that ei­ther side, com­men­ta­tor, politi­cian or ob­serv­er, needs to know when to stop. Some­times, when some­one stops talk­ing or stops re­spond­ing, that’s al­so a com­ment, and some­times that com­ment is stronger than the words we say.”

Mo­hammed said po­lit­i­cal par­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in gov­ern­ment, must ap­pre­ci­ate the emo­tion­al in­vest­ment sup­port­ers place in them and recog­nise that the ac­tions of in­di­vid­ual min­is­ters can af­fect pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion as a whole.

“When min­is­ters and MPs make state­ments that call in­to ques­tion the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment, the UNC as a whole or even the lead­er­ship of the Prime Min­is­ter, that di­rect­ly af­fects the emo­tion­al well-be­ing of sup­port­ers,” he said.

“The ground will car­ry it, but the ground will al­so get fed up of the same thing over and over. There has to be a lim­it.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the con­tro­ver­sy cen­tres on a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Mo­hammed stressed his warn­ing was to both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

“It’s a strong warn­ing to both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion. Both sides need to un­der­stand when to stop.”

Asked whether the Prime Min­is­ter should in­ter­vene in the lat­est mat­ter, Mo­hammed said, “I don’t know how many times the PM must tell big peo­ple to shut up and say noth­ing.”