PNM's Women's League accuses UNC leader of "race-baiting"

THE NATIONAL Women’s League of the People’s National Movement (PNM) has accused Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar of “race-baiting” and vilifying the Prime Minister.

In a release on Saturday, chairwoman of the league Camille Robinson-Regis said, “It cannot be that the Opposition Leader is willing to destroy the very fabric of the society she wishes to lead.”

She said the debate over whether the Opposition Leader said “blank” or “black” at a recent UNC meeting was moot, “when one is able to admit that Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been involved in politics for more than two decades, and understands very well both what her audience would have heard throughout her speech and the consistency of her party’s behaviour.”

Robinson-Regis reminded that it was the same Opposition Leader who described the Prime Minister as an “Oreo” and has had her ministers make the “vilest of accusations” against Dr Rowley “with neither sanction nor objection.”

The league took issue with a newspaper editorial accusing it of giving the Opposition Leader a free pass. The league's chairwoman also took aim at the UNC’s Diego Martin West candidate Marsha Walker, accusing the latter of engaging in “another crass display of hypocrisy” by pandering to the media’s cameras on nomination day Friday by greeting Rowley although she had already “besmirched” his character by accusing him of being abusive to her daughter.

“The Women’s League therefore stands resolute in its condemnation of both Mrs Persad-Bissessar and her Diego Martin West proxy for their wanton disregard for decency,” the release said.

Robinson-Regis also stressed that the PNM was willing to accept any honest critique of its behaviour, past or present, but drew the line when any attempt is made to muffle the condemnation of the Opposition Leader’s behaviour by including the PNM in the same breath.

“With a mere three weeks to go before the general elections of 2020, the Women’s League is hoping that the Opposition Leader and her candidates would seek to restore some sobriety to the campaign rather than continue to plummet down this road of decadence,” the release said.