Trade, Investments and Communications Minister Vasant Bharath says the UNC and the Government were not involved in last weekend’s placement of racists posters on vehicles and slashing of car tyres at MovieTowne, Port-of-Spain.
One of the posters which were allegedly placed on a vehicle said in part: “We black African King anointed by the Blood of Jesus Christ has decreed that it is we time again.” It also said: “Starting from today the terror shall begin...today is just a flat tire.”
Tyres from an estimated ten cars were deflated, sources said. Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams, when contacted for comment yesterday, said he was unable to say if the matter was being investigated.
Bharath commented on the incident after public relations officer of the Opposition PNM, Faris Al-Rawi, distanced the PNM from the incident, saying the PNM was disgusted by it.
He said the posters “contained vile racist and seditious comments clearly designed to create hatred, fear and division in our country.”
He said the incident was a repeat of two previous “heinous” incidents, the first of which took place during a Joint Trade Union Movement-led march in Port-of-Spain last May. During that march, which included PNM supporters, placards alleged to be racist were displayed at the Parliament. The Opposition denied any involvement in that incident and called for police to investigate, but no one has been arrested.
Al-Rawi said in that incident racist placards were displayed and later determined to have been distributed by unknown people to paid troublemakers. He said the second was the placement of “equally racist posters on several vehicles at the PNM’s immensely successful Divali celebration this year.”
The PNM was accused of orchestrating that incident too, he said, and had called for the perpetrators to be charged by the police in both incidents. “This incident is no different,” he added.
Al-Rawi said: “The tragic idiocy of these messages of hate benefits no one other than those desperate to maintain division in an attempt to stop the solid ascendancy of the PNM.” He said there was no place for any form of racism in the country, adding: “The PNM condemns such acts in the strongest possible terms.”
Al-Rawi said if that was what opponents to the PNM had used to start their 2015 general election campaigns: “Good citizens should be wary of what is still to come and should collectively denounce and hold with greatest intolerance the desperate actions of the wickedly insidious.”
Bharath: This should stop
Bharath made a similar comment, saying it was “regrettable that anyone would descend into this kind of action.” He said no political party, be it the UNC or PNM or any other party, would engage in such acts, and distanced the UNC and Government from them. He said people should “cease and desist from such incidents...they can only create further polarisation in the country.”