Saddam labels union protesters as ‘shameless political prostitutes’

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Two Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have lashed out at yes­ter­day’s trade union protest in Port-of-Spain, with one of them de­scrib­ing the par­tic­i­pants as a group of “shame­less po­lit­i­cal pros­ti­tutes.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on the protest out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein blunt­ly said, “They are a bunch of shame­less po­lit­i­cal pros­ti­tutes.”

He of­fered no fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion be­fore end­ing the ex­change.

The trade union march, which al­so at­tract­ed mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day, drew crit­i­cism from mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment.

Al­though PNM mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the demon­stra­tion, the march was or­gan­ised by trade unions, rather than the Op­po­si­tion par­ty.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal al­so ridiculed the protest, de­scrib­ing it as a “poor­ly at­tend­ed fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion” and claim­ing the Op­po­si­tion had failed to mo­bilise suf­fi­cient sup­port for the demon­stra­tion. Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Mooni­lal took a swipe at the pro­test­ers be­fore de­liv­er­ing a min­is­te­r­i­al state­ment on de­vel­op­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The min­is­ter said he was, “In­ter­rupt­ed just a few min­utes ago by what ap­peared to be a poor­ly at­tend­ed fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion, where I be­lieve my friends op­po­site could not even muster their own par­ty to sup­port a march. They brought friends, fam­i­ly and dad­dy and failed.”