Mark: Rowley a one percent frontman

Wade Mark, Opposition senator
Wade Mark, Opposition senator

What’s in a name? Opposition Senator Wade Mark has called the Prime Minister a “frontman for the one percent,” defending his political leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s refusal to apologise for calling Dr Keith Rowley an “Oreo” last week.

“There is no racism in her remarks. That is our position. Rowley is like the subject of (Martiniquais intellectual) Frantz Fanon’s famous book, Black Skin, White Masks,” Mark said, specifically referring to members of the ruling class trying to be relatable to the masses, but being disingenuous. “They were not genuine, they were frontmen. I think Dr Rowley is a frontman for the one percent in TT. I give another expression for (Oreo) but I still believe that he is what has been described. He can’t escape… Is that racist? That’s not racist,” Mark said at the Opposition’s weekly press conference yesterday at the Office of the Opposition Leader on Charles Street, Port of Spain.

He added that “people who understand struggle in this country” and who “wage war against the oppressors and dictators of freedom,” like activists Khafra Kambon and David Mohammed, both of whom have said publicly on Persad-Bissessar’s comments, “have said there is not one iota of racism in it.” “That’s a script the PNM has written,” Mark said.

The Opposition was not taking the PNM’s request for an apology seriously, he said, because it’s a distraction from the other more pressing matters in the country, like the closure of Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre refinery.

“There’s no doubt about it. The government is not running the country in the interest of the people. You must be aware the distribution of wealth in this country is that one per cent of the people own 80 per cent of the land. You can call it the one per cent but there is a class of people that control the wealth and the rest have fight up for the crumbs. That is the reality of TT today,” he said.

Asked to cite the source of his data about income inequality in TT, Mark said he researched it on the “world wide web.”

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"Mark: Rowley a one percent frontman"

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