Mitchell: PM’s Sabga/Hadeed remark ‘beneath the office’

For­mer cul­ture min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell has crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­ter she sug­gest­ed the Op­po­si­tion should in­vite Star Sab­ga and Jen­na Hadeed to per­form at fu­ture Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from re­porters Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “If the PNM MPs and their sup­port­ers don’t want East In­di­ans to par­tic­i­pate in Eman­ci­pa­tion events that’s their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic choice. Maybe next year the PNM could lob­by UTT to in­vite Star Sab­ga and Jen­na Hadeed for a spo­ken word per­for­mance in­stead.”

She was ref­er­enc­ing a tas­sa per­for­mance and clas­si­cal In­di­an Dance dur­ing an African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tion host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) which has sparked de­bate on so­cial me­dia, with some peo­ple ques­tion­ing whether it was ap­pro­pri­ate for an event com­mem­o­rat­ing the eman­ci­pa­tion of en­slaved Africans.

In a Face­book post on Sun­day ti­tled, A Prime Min­is­ter Should Nev­er Do This, Mitchell said the re­marks were “be­neath the of­fice”.

“The of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter car­ries enor­mous weight. That of­fice should strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem, not un­der­mine it by pub­licly sin­gling out a pri­vate cit­i­zen.

“No pri­vate cit­i­zen, whether un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, be­fore the courts, or nev­er charged at all, should be­come the sub­ject of ridicule or po­lit­i­cal point-scor­ing by the coun­try’s high­est elect­ed of­fi­cial. That is be­neath the of­fice.”

He said re­spect for the rule of law re­quired le­gal process­es to take their course with­out com­men­tary that risked erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence.

The Prime Min­is­ter is al­so fac­ing crit­i­cism for not at­tend­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions yes­ter­day.

The Prime Min­is­ter had been sched­uled to ad­dress the Lidj Ya­su Omowale Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage at 3 p.m., ac­cord­ing to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go. It was lat­er an­nounced that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would no longer at­tend. No of­fi­cial rea­son was giv­en, and sec­tions of the crowd re­spond­ed by jeer­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er said she had nev­er com­mit­ted to at­tend­ing the event, not­ing she at­tend­ed two African Eman­ci­pa­tion events on Thurs­day and spent Sat­ur­day with her fam­i­ly.

“I’m sor­ry that those per­sons who were ea­ger­ly wait­ing to in­sult and curse me were dis­ap­point­ed. They should not wor­ry, there will al­ways be an­oth­er event where they may have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hurl curs­es and in­sults at me,” she said.

She al­so ac­cused PNM MPs and their sup­port­ers of be­ing “con­sumed with ir­ra­tional ha­tred”, say­ing she was crit­i­cised whether she wore African cloth­ing, par­tic­i­pat­ed in African cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties or praised the con­tri­bu­tions of Afro-Trinida­di­ans.

The con­tro­ver­sy fol­lowed Sat­ur­day’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Day ob­ser­vances, dur­ing which Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin was booed by sec­tions of the crowd dur­ing the of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny at In­de­pen­dence Square af­ter she men­tioned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar in