PM’s UNC message criticised for deepening racial divisions

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s spe­cial In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers is draw­ing crit­i­cism from promi­nent voic­es with­in the In­do-Trinida­di­an and Hin­du com­mu­ni­ties, with for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj and Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj warn­ing that her rhetoric risks deep­en­ing racial di­vi­sions.

Suni­ty Ma­haraj, a po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, went fur­ther, say­ing many In­do-Trinida­di­ans were em­bar­rassed by the mes­sage and did not iden­ti­fy with what she de­scribed as its “mean-spirit­ed­ness” and di­vi­sive­ness.

Speak­ing on Tues­day Talk with David Ab­du­lah, Ma­haraj said the Prime Min­is­ter’s mes­sage was his­tor­i­cal­ly in­ac­cu­rate and con­tained cod­ed ref­er­ences aimed at In­do-Trinida­di­ans.

“Very many In­do-Trinida­di­ans do not share that view. They are em­bar­rassed. They want the best of them­selves to be re­flect­ed in the na­tion­al ta­pes­try,” Ma­haraj said.

“They do not want the mean-spirit­ed­ness that is re­flect­ed in that, the di­vi­sive­ness.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued the sep­a­rate mes­sage to what she de­scribed as her “UNC fam­i­ly” as Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brat­ed its 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence on Mon­day.

In the mes­sage, she re­flect­ed on the hard­ships en­dured by pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, re­fer­ring to an­ces­tors who worked in “la­goons, cane fields and oil­fields,” sur­vived on “salt and rice” and strug­gled for ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion and ba­sic gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

Suni­ty Ma­haraj ar­gued that ref­er­ences such as “salt and rice” and “la­goons” amount­ed to cod­ed lan­guage di­rect­ed large­ly at In­do-Trinida­di­ans.

“Where is the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress? Where is the na­tion­al part of the UNC if you are speak­ing to your mem­ber­ship and on­ly re­fer­ring [in] your cod­ed lan­guages about In­do-Trinida­di­ans?” she asked.

She al­so re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ment that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was speak­ing to her po­lit­i­cal sup­port­ers and not ad­dress­ing the coun­try in her ca­pac­i­ty as Prime Min­is­ter.

“A Prime Min­is­ter does not speak two dif­fer­ent lan­guages,” Ma­haraj said.

At her in­au­gu­ra­tion in May 2025, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pledged to be a Prime Min­is­ter for all cit­i­zens, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

“If you are UNC, TPP, PNM or any oth­er af­fil­i­a­tion, I see you. You will be treat­ed equal­ly and fair­ly. I made a promise that every­body will win, and I plan to ful­fil that promise,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said at the time.

Suni­ty Ma­haraj de­scribed the In­de­pen­dence mes­sage as “in­ac­cu­rate” and “full of dog whis­tles”, ar­gu­ing that those de­fend­ing it were at­tempt­ing to “de­fend the in­de­fen­si­ble”.

“You can­not be so un­aware of his­to­ry to write that non­sense, ex­cept that you have an agen­da and the agen­da is one of di­vi­sion,” she said. “We just have to call it for what it is. It’s just vile. It hurts.”

She al­so sug­gest­ed the con­tro­ver­sy could be serv­ing as a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion from oth­er im­por­tant na­tion­al is­sues, com­par­ing it to a ma­gi­cian di­rect­ing an au­di­ence’s at­ten­tion to one hand while per­form­ing the trick with the oth­er.

Sep­a­rate­ly, SDMS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia he al­so be­lieved the Prime Min­is­ter’s mes­sage had con­tributed to ex­ist­ing racial di­vi­sions.

“The coun­try is al­ready racial­ly di­vid­ed as it is. In my opin­ion, yes, this has just added to that di­vi­sion,” he said.

Ma­haraj, whose grand­fa­ther, Bhadase Sagan Maraj, found­ed the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP), said he was re­luc­tant to be­come deeply in­volved in racial­ly charged po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sions be­cause of his own his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tion to pol­i­tics.

How­ev­er, he said he be­lieved Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ap­peal could be in­ter­pret­ed as an at­tempt to con­sol­i­date the UNC’s tra­di­tion­al East In­di­an sup­port.

“The ap­peal was, and it was to so­lid­i­fy the East In­di­an vote with­in the UNC, in my opin­ion,” he said.

Ma­haraj warned that the ap­proach could al­so alien­ate peo­ple from oth­er com­mu­ni­ties who sup­port­ed the UNC in the last gen­er­al elec­tion and po­ten­tial­ly dri­ve them back to­wards their tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal bases.

Asked whether he be­lieved it was ap­pro­pri­ate for a po­lit­i­cal leader to ap­peal to one racial group, Ma­haraj re­spond­ed: “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think it’s ap­pro­pri­ate at any point in time to ap­peal to one racial group, to be quite hon­est,” he said.

The SDMS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the tim­ing, as the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty en­ters an in­ten­sive pe­ri­od of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances, dur­ing which tem­ples, schools and Hin­du or­gan­i­sa­tions will have an in­creased pub­lic pres­ence.

He ques­tioned whether those ac­tiv­i­ties could now be mis­in­ter­pret­ed by some as be­ing con­nect­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­lit­i­cal mes­sage.

Ma­haraj stressed, how­ev­er, that he had not ob­served wide­spread racial favouritism by the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion since it as­sumed of­fice.

“I don’t think there’s much favouritism be­ing shown to any racial group at this point in time. It’s just the calls and the words that have been spo­ken are in­di­cat­ing that,” he said.

“I have not seen it man­i­fest it­self out­side there in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

He did, how­ev­er, point to the com­po­si­tion of sev­er­al State boards, say­ing he had ob­served “a tremen­dous amount of East In­di­ans” among di­rec­tors and ques­tion­ing whether this could be per­ceived as favouritism.

Ma­haraj al­so sug­gest­ed East In­di­an busi­ness­peo­ple may now have to tread care­ful­ly about how their ac­tions are per­ceived in the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, al­though he was re­luc­tant to elab­o­rate, say­ing he was try­ing to re­main neu­tral.

“We’re try­ing to be very tepid in how we con­verse and so forth. But the calls that have been made are not ap­pro­pri­ate at this point in time,” he said.

“We are a na­tion that is un­der­go­ing tremen­dous change. Tremen­dous change in all dif­fer­ent for­mats.”