Speaker tells MPs: End race talk now

HOUSE SPEAKER Barry Sinanan read the riot act to parliamentarians, telling them it was time to end all race talk in Parliament.

Sinanan’s intervention came as Planning Minister Dr Keith Rowley was mercilessly assailed by racial barbs from the Opposition benches during debate on the Provisional Collection of Taxes Order 2003 in the House of Representatives yesterday.  “It is high time to stop this race talk,” Sinanan admonished PNM and UNC MPs alike. The Speaker said such outbursts were insulting to the Chair and the national community and “it is not doing anyone any good.” He warned that further racial utterances from MPs would not be tolerated.

During his contribution, Row-ley said Government was doing nothing discrimatory by addressing the educational deficiencies among Afro-Trinidadian males, ages 17 to 24. “To lift you up, I do not have to pull you down,” he declared. Rowley said the educational problems (pre-school, secondary, tertiary) within the Afro-Trinidadian community were well known and Government had a duty to treat those problems. The Minister warned that if this is not done, it will unleash “a cycle of perpetual poverty and destruction upon the entire society.” He added that although the statistics categorised a group of people in a certain way, it did not give the UNC licence to paint it in the worst possible light.

Rowley recalled that while in Opposition, the PNM never hurled racial insults at the UNC for building the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Technology (TTIT) in Couva and COSTAAT’s attempts to reach out to the group he referred to earlier “is not to exclude anyone.” The Minister however condemned the UNC for downgrading the student capacity at John Donaldson Technical Institute from 2,500 to 800 during their time in office.  He said the UNC was trying to fool the population into believing that they (UNC) “found the holy grail of PNM racism” and had “hitched their wagon to talk about racism.” “There is too much race talk in this Parliament and this country,” Rowley declared. He spoke of tertiary education opportunities which the University of TT would provide for all students, regardless of ethnicity.

Opposition Chief Whip Ganga Singh countered that COSTAAT would be admitting students on “a quota system and a Cudjoe mentality,” and Government was being “offensive” in dealing with Afro-Trinidadian male underachievement rather than male underachievement. Sinanan war-ned Singh to tread carefully as he would classify racial remarks as offensive under Standing Order 36(4). The Chief Whip claimed Government was “institutionalising racism at the tertiary education level” and persons were admitted to TTIT on the basis of meritocracy.  Singh called upon Government to produce statistics to show why their course of action was justified and warned that their actions could “give rise to ethnic tension in our country.”