JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal says the coun­try’s lead­ers need to de­sist from call­ing peo­ple by deroga­to­ry terms.

She made the com­ment as she said the racist and deroga­to­ry com­ments made against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in an au­dio clip over the week­end do not af­fect her, adding that the phrase “one per cent” is sim­i­lar to what was said.

Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal was re­fer­ring to parts of the leaked au­dio al­leged­ly in­volv­ing Star Sab­ga and her niece Genevieve Hadeed, in which Sab­ga made com­ments to­wards the Prime Min­is­ter, re­fer­ring to her as “ah stink­ing c***ie woman.”

Through­out the au­dio tape, which was used as a ba­sis to de­tain the women and Hadeed’s hus­band, busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, the word “c***lie” was used three times, twice by Sab­ga in di­rect ref­er­ence to the Prime Min­is­ter and once by Genevieve to clar­i­fy who her aunt was re­fer­ring to.

The term is used as a racial slur against peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent.

Asked about the use of the word at a wreath lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal said as a Hin­du woman of East In­di­an de­scent, she was not of­fend­ed by the com­ment.

“I am of East In­di­an de­scent and I take no of­fence by what was stat­ed in that record­ing and I will tell you why, when we fre­quent­ly re­fer to the Lebanese and Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty as a one per cent, isn’t that done with the in­ten­tion of al­so be­ing prej­u­diced to­wards that group in so­ci­ety and be­ing deroga­to­ry to­wards them?”

She added that the term “one per cent,” which a mem­ber of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty coined the group as in 2017 dur­ing an in­ter­view with a US me­dia per­son­al­i­ty, is of­fen­sive. The term one per cent was used in the past by mem­bers of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie al­so ref­er­enced the one per cent dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the cur­rent SoE last month.

“Whether you’re one per cent, two per cent, a hun­dred per cent, you’re a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go and you de­serve to be re­spect­ed. For some rea­son, lead­ers be­lieve be­cause they oc­cu­py high of­fice, it en­ti­tles you to re­spect; it does not. I’ve nev­er be­lieved that so.”

She added: “What I heard in that au­dio was the rant­i­ng of a frus­trat­ed cit­i­zen, and if our lead­ers, if our lead­ers took of­fence by be­ing called or re­ferred to by a cer­tain name, then they need to cease and de­sist from re­fer­ring to oth­er peo­ple by sim­i­lar terms.”

She said the Gov­ern­ment must act in the best wish­es of all cit­i­zens and not just the peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent. She added that she could say this with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion.