Opposition to PM: Cool it Kamla

Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­[email protected]

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

Af­ter re­veal­ing that the in­di­vid­ual charged with threat­en­ing his life on­line is em­ployed at a gov­ern­ment agency, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne is call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to “cool it” and “mod­er­ate” her lan­guage, ar­gu­ing that her ag­gres­sive rhetoric is en­cour­ag­ing sup­port­ers to en­gage in tox­ic be­hav­iour on so­cial me­dia.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion news brief­ing in Port-of-Spain, Browne said while he was sat­is­fied with the ac­tion of the po­lice, “my big­ger con­cern is the pol­i­tics of hate and di­vi­sion and the nar­ra­tive that is be­ing ad­vanced. Some of it seems to be im­port­ed from abroad, which is serv­ing to po­larise the so­ci­ety and pos­si­bly rad­i­calise in­di­vid­u­als even more than be­fore.”

Browne said the Prime Min­is­ter seems to be go­ing down a road of reck­less rhetoric, ag­gres­sive lan­guage and wild ac­cu­sa­tions with­out sub­stance.

The sen­a­tor warned, “You’re deal­ing with a broad pop­u­la­tion. You’re deal­ing with sup­port­ers, some of which might be sus­cep­ti­ble to tak­ing the wrong de­ci­sions and ac­tions based on your rhetoric.”

Browne said Gov­ern­ment and all po­lit­i­cal ac­tors need to be pru­dent in their lan­guage and the ex­am­ple they set for their sup­port­ers.

“And the Prime Min­is­ter has been neg­li­gent in that re­gard and from some of her out­put has been, in my view, feed­ing this po­lar­i­sa­tion with­in the so­ci­ety.”

He said there’s a mis­con­cep­tion that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ped­dled that all min­is­ters have a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

“There were re­cent lies be­ing per­pe­trat­ed that every­one has an ar­se­nal of weapons. That is al­so not true. But when you put this mis­chief out there, it re­al­ly af­fects the pub­lic’s per­cep­tion and the risk and safe­ty bal­ance in the eyes of the pub­lic.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert al­so weighed in. He sought to re­mind the me­dia that re­cent­ly, the PM threat­ened him with phys­i­cal harm.

“Now, the Prime Min­is­ter threat­ened to cuff me down. And said to­day I’m an evil man. So, I sin­cere­ly hope that this is not go­ing to cause any of her sup­port­ers to make sim­i­lar threats against me.”

Im­bert added, “I would re­peat our re­quest to the Prime Min­is­ter, cool it, calm down, stop this vi­o­lent lan­guage. Be­cause even though you may think it’s a joke, I saw it some­where that they said it was a joke, the cuff down thing, your sup­port­ers may not.”

Im­bert said the PM is en­dan­ger­ing the lives of peo­ple.

“And just to add what Dr Browne just said, in my 33 years in pub­lic life, I have 22 years' ex­pe­ri­ence as a cab­i­net min­is­ter, I nev­er had a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail or blue lights. So that is just an out­ra­geous lie out­side there,” he said, adding that the on­ly ex­cep­tion was when he act­ed as prime min­is­ter.