Marcelle accuses PM of racist, apartheid agenda; calls her ‘old, senile and evil’

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle has de­scribed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as an “old, se­nile, wicked and evil woman drunk with pow­er,” ac­cus­ing her of pur­su­ing a racist and apartheid agen­da fol­low­ing her lat­est pub­lic at­tack against him.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment yes­ter­day, Mar­celle hit back at the Prime Min­is­ter over re­marks in which she ac­cused him of dis­play­ing “swine be­hav­iour,” sug­gest­ing he came from the “gut­ter” and mocked his le­gal knowl­edge.

“What I have wit­nessed this morn­ing from Kam­la is the rant of an old, se­nile, wicked and evil woman drunk with pow­er,” Mar­celle said.

The Op­po­si­tion MP said he would no longer re­frain from di­rect­ly at­tack­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, ar­gu­ing that she could not con­tin­ue mak­ing dis­parag­ing state­ments about him while ex­pect­ing re­spect in re­turn.

“Kam­la can­not be al­lowed to say what she wants, how she wants whilst I re­main re­spect­ful,” he said.

“Af­ter 19 months in of­fice, I have main­tained that dis­ci­pline. How­ev­er, it stops to­day.”

The con­fronta­tion fol­lowed a dis­pute over the restora­tion of elec­tric­i­ty to Beetham Gar­dens and Laven­tille af­ter Sat­ur­day’s fire at a Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) com­pound in Laven­tille.

Mar­celle had al­leged that a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter de­lib­er­ate­ly in­ter­fered with ef­forts to re­store elec­tric­i­ty to the com­mu­ni­ty, a claim re­ject­ed by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who main­tained that dam­age to elec­tri­cal in­fra­struc­ture had cre­at­ed safe­ty con­cerns.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly crit­i­cised Mar­celle, ac­cus­ing him and his sup­port­ers of har­bour­ing ha­tred to­wards In­di­ans and Africans who sup­port the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

“As for Ka­reem’s swine be­hav­iour, you can take some peo­ple out of the gut­ter, but you can’t take the bit­ter out of them,” she said.

“They were born in­to hate, grew up in hate, live in hate and will die in ha­tred of oth­ers who don’t even both­er with them.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so took aim at Mar­celle’s le­gal knowl­edge.

“If the UNC want­ed to kill Ka­reem, we would give him a law book to read. Hope he has a won­der­ful day.”

Mar­celle re­spond­ed by out­lin­ing his aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions, say­ing he grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies at 25 with a Bach­e­lor of Laws de­gree with Up­per Sec­ond Class Ho­n­ours.

He said he grad­u­at­ed from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School at 27, was called to the Bar at 28, sub­se­quent­ly be­came an al­der­man at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and was elect­ed MP for Laven­tille West at 30.

Mar­celle ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of us­ing racial­ly di­vi­sive lan­guage against him and his com­mu­ni­ty.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has al­so weighed in, ac­cus­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar of at­tempt­ing to pro­voke res­i­dents in­to civ­il un­rest to jus­ti­fy the use of sweep­ing po­lice pow­ers un­der the re­cent­ly en­act­ed Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act.

Beck­les ar­gued that the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­scrip­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and its sup­port­ers through ref­er­ences to a “swine cul­ture” was in­tend­ed to de­mean po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents rather than ad­dress the coun­try’s prob­lems.

She went fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter’s lan­guage could be in­tend­ed to pro­voke re­ac­tions from com­mu­ni­ties that might sub­se­quent­ly be­come tar­gets of spe­cial polic­ing op­er­a­tions.

“Fur­ther, in the midst of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act, it seems that Kam­la is bait­ing the peo­ple to re­act and cause civ­il un­rest, and so jus­ti­fy her in­sa­tiable need to stop, block and lock up en­tire sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion.”

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act, pro­claimed ear­li­er this month, pro­vides for en­hanced polic­ing pow­ers with­in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas, in­clud­ing re­stric­tions on move­ment and ad­di­tion­al search and de­ten­tion pow­ers.

Mean­while, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young has con­demned what he de­scribed as in­creas­ing­ly racist, deroga­to­ry and di­vi­sive lan­guage com­ing from the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship.

In a video state­ment is­sued short­ly af­ter Mar­celle’s re­sponse, Young ex­pressed con­cern about the tone of the na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal dis­course.

“To­day’s con­ver­sa­tion is quite a dis­turb­ing one for me per­son­al­ly, and it is about the di­vi­sive­ness, the racist, the rage-bait­ing and, quite frankly, the most dis­gust­ing, deroga­to­ry state­ments that I’m see­ing com­ing from lead­er­ship in our twin-is­land state,” Young said.

He ap­pealed for re­straint and greater re­spect in po­lit­i­cal dis­course.

“Tone it down, calm it down, be­cause the on­ly way we will progress as Trinidad and To­ba­go is with a lev­el of re­spect and a com­plete re­jec­tion of any di­vi­sive­ness based on race, on re­li­gion, on dif­fer­ent cul­tures, dif­fer­ent be­liefs.”

Young urged po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to re­flect on the words of the na­tion­al an­them, par­tic­u­lar­ly the com­mit­ment that every creed and race should find an equal place.