I'LL DEFEND MYSELF

TOBAGO East MP Ayanna Webster-Roy is not taking too kindly to having her personal cellphone number leaked to the public by Opposition activist Devant Maharaj. She warned yesterday she would defend herself against any harassment that ensues as a result of the leak.

Webster-Roy is one of several government ministers and MPs whose cell numbers were released over social media within recent time by Maharaj, a former People's Partnership Senator and Agriculture Minister.

Webster-Roy told Newsday she will defend herself against any harassment after she received WhatsApp messages via her cellphone from Chutney singer Nermal “Massive” Gosein.

She posted on her Facebook page: "Any one who prank call me or send me nuisance messages I am posting their number. The first person according to my caller ID was Massive Gosein." She added Gosein's cell number to her FB post which was followed by the hashtag: do so don’t like so.

Gosein fired back on his Facebook page saying he has reported Webster-Roy to the Marabella Police Station after being “verbally abused and threatened” by Webster-Roy and her husband. When contacted, Webster-Roy said Gosein was “well within his rights” to make a report.

She added that she did not call Gosein and “leave any threatening messages.” She said when she called his number, “no one answered and I ended the call.”

ABUSIVE MESSAGE

Webster-Roy said before she knew her number had been posted by Maharaj, "I received a WhatsApp message with a poster with the words, 'f...away' or something to that extent.” She added that she then received a voice note but did not immediately open it.

“Usually people send me messages and I reach out to them to have discussions, if it is something we can work out. The person who sent me the message and voice note did not respond when I asked who was it sending me these things. So I tried calling the number to see if I could get on. The person never answered and I ended the call,” Webster-Roy said.

Webster-Roy said when she opened the voice note it was someone saying, "Shamfa f-away, whoever f-away” and so on. "I found that to be very offensive,” she told Newsday. She said she used an app downloaded on her phone which helps identify callers and the source of messages. Using this app, she found the number which sent her the message and voice note. This number, she said, was Gosein's.

“I decided that I have had enough of people harassing me. And I have taken a decision that anybody sending nuisance messages or prank calling me, I will identify the person to the public and that is what I did,” Webster-Roy said.

As to Gosein's claim that her husband threatened him, Webster-Roy said, “My husband does not have this number (which Gosein alleged he got the threatening call from). That is not our number. I don’t know who that number belongs to. My husband is not a pastor. And that is the extent of the situation.”

NOT TAKING IT LIGHTLY

Webster-Roy said for “too long politicians are harassed and abused and we have taken it quietly.” When I offered myself to serve the people of TT, she said, I never gave up my right to a life free from harassment and a life free from violence.

Because she offered herself as a politician to serve the people, “that does not give them the right to treat me as though I am worthless. Trinbagonians have to do better and I am not going to stand for it.”

Asked how she felt about Maharaj releasing her number, Webster-Roy said it is a number she had since she worked at Community Development in Tobago. “So I would have shared my number freely with every and anybody. But the thing is, to put my number out there where unsolicited and unrestricted people can just come and message me and call me, that is ridiculous.

Webster-Roy said that in the past, when she became an MP, she gave out her number to a lot of people and there were times late in the night, a person would call and just breathe loudly on the phone, without saying anything. Then there were other times when she received calls and on answering, would hear people making love.

"These are things I have gone experienced but kept quiet about. But no more. This is the end of the rope for me. I am going to defend myself. And who vex, that is their prerogative to be vex. I am going to stand up for me. If Trinbagonians do not want to stand and defend those who serve them, I am going to defend me,” Webster-Roy said.

CALL TO INVESTIGATE

When contacted for comment, Gosein told Newsday that Maharaj is his publicist and to contact him for a comment. When contacted, Maharaj said Gosein sent Webster-Roy his newest chutney offering via WhatsApp and was hoping to subsequently contact her for an appointment.

Maharaj said Gosein got a call, “from what we learned afterwards to be her husband, in which he (Gosein) was verbally abused with obscene language and threats and so on.”

Maharaj said Gosein was shocked as he knew this was the relative of a Minister of Government and so he decided to make a report to the Marabella police station. Maharaj said he hopes Police Commissioner Gary Griffith, “expeditiously investigates this matter and shows no favour or preference to any government minister."

He said Gosein wants to speak to Webster-Roy, in her location at the Office of the Prime Minister, about the “disproportionate funding” being given to his Massive Roving Chutney Tent, in the years under PNM rule. Maharaj said he will be following up with the police on the investigation into the call Gosein received and if the police do not act, "with some degree of alacrity", the judicial process will kick in.”