COMMENTARY: PNM CAN'T ACCUSE KAMLA OF USING RACE AS A POLITICAL WEAPON

PM Kamla meets residents of Enterprise. (Below) PM greets a young supporters

On Monday night UNC Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar took PNM Leader Keith Rowley to task for failing to condemn blatant racist statements from members of the PNM. She singled out the "Calcutta Ship" statement of 2013 during the THA election, and a comment by Fitgerald Hinds, in which he chastised a rasta boy for kissing the palm of Mrs. Persad-Bissessar.

The PNM responded by accusing the UNC of a strategy of “hugs by day, racist appeals by night.”

A statement from General Secretary Ashton Ford called on the national community “to reject the decision...to inject the issue of race into the 2015 general election campaign.”

He added that the PNM “prides itself on the fact that, despite the multi-ethnic society of Trinidad and Tobago, this country, due to the enlightened posture of the PNM both in government and opposition, has avoided the ethnic conflagrations that have occurred in similar societies both near and far from Trinidad and Tobago. Under the PNM, all ethnic groups have risen.”

We could point out numerous instances to contradict this statement by Ford starting with Eric Williams and his "recalcitrant minority" rant in Woodford Square back in 1958, but we prefer to focus on the two points the Prime Minister made Monday night.

The Calcutta Ship statement was not accidental. Hilton Sandy himself said he had raised the issue before. Please listen to the recording below and hear for yourself that this was not a random thought. 

The PNM leader was present when Sandy made the statement. There was no ambiguity about what Sandy was doing and yet Dr Rowley praised Sandy.

The graphic below contains a direct quote from Dr Rowey at the meeting. He made that statement when he spoke after Sandy that night in Roxborough. 

When there was national outrage over the comment Rowley offered an apology but interestingly neither he nor the head of the THA, Orville London, imposed any sanctions on Sandy and after Sandy won the seat he was rewarded with a plum position in the THA.

The PNM admitted Tuesday that the Sandy comment was improper and that "our Political Leader, Dr. Keith Rowley...immediately called for an apology from the candidate for Roxborough, Hilton Sandy, and distanced the PNM from it.”

Well Dr Rowley did not IMMEDIATELY call for an apology. It was clear that race was an important part of the THA campaign in 2013.

But don’t take our word for it. Read the Express Editorial published on January 8, 2013:, which concluded that “unless the party's leadership does some more effective damage control, the incident will return to haunt the PNM in the next Trinidad election.”

• The problem with Mr Sandy's ship slip 

For your convenience we have reproduced the editorial below as well:
 
Almost from the moment the Tobago House of Assembly election date was announced last November, rumours started that the PNM in the island was using race as a political scare tactic. Last Sunday, Deputy Chief Secretary Hilton Sandy, in a careless remark, added credence to such a perception. Speaking on the platform at a public political meeting, Mr Sandy said, "There is a ship at Calcutta waiting to sail to Tobago. That ship is waiting to sail to Tobago; they are waiting to get the results of this election, if you bring the wrong results, Calcutta ship is coming down for you!"

Mr Sandy has since apologised, saying his statement was "just some political picong, but it was no racist talk. It was not meant to offend anybody." But, first of all, Mr Sandy needs to look up the meaning of "picong", since his remark entirely lacked the wit or wordplay which defines the term. Secondly, the fact that, even in the heat of rhetoric, the Deputy Chief Secretary would consider such a claim apposite or inoffensive reveals an unbecoming mindset. Indeed, by including in his apology the clichéd claim of "I have a lot of Indian friends", he has only reinforced the inference. People who have lots of friends from outside their ethnic group do not usually need to trumpet the fact.

It is more likely that, because the Indo-Trinidadian vote is irrelevant in the THA election, Mr Sandy thought he could couch his "picong'' in racial terms, creating without backlash a spectre of Indians waiting to overrun and take over Tobago. In Trinidad, where both parties need crossover votes for electoral victory, politicians' public statements are correspondingly more circumspect.

Even so, when it became the turn of PNM Leader Keith Rowley to distance himself and his party from Mr Sandy's statement, "unfortunate" and "unnecessary" were Dr Rowley's strongest adjectives for his Tobago PNM colleague's "misstep or misgivings". He then added that Mr Sandy's message "forms no part of PNM policy or PNM campaign.'' Knowledgeable observers would have reached for their pinches of salt at this claim, recalling evidence of the race card long being played by the Tobago PNM, albeit at a safe distance from media cameras. Indeed, Mr Sandy's error fits the definition given by one wag—a gaffe in politics is when someone accidentally tells the truth. Mr Sandy's "picong'' accordingly represented a whispering campaign having become a roar, with no immediate condemnation coming from Dr Rowley or Chief Secretary Orville London.

Would this lose them votes in Tobago? Probably not. But, unless the party's leadership does some more effective damage control, the incident will return to haunt the PNM in the next Trinidad election. 

And here is the HINDS quote. He made the statement in the Senate:

"Yesterday, I saw one little idiot dreadlocked boy...I saw an idiot little rasta boy kissing the Prime Minister's palm. That made me sick. And if I had my way, I cut every dreadlock off his head, every one, madame vice President, that idiot boy, what a rude little dreadlock."

-Jai Parasram