Vernella: Men mind your children

Alleyne-Toppin said the speech band uses double-talk and innuendo and its meanings are not meant to be understood by children but only by adults. “It is meant to be an insult, and it is risque,” she explained. “We use it to ‘war’ in the streets.”

Alleyne-Toppin then went on to urge the men of Trinidad and Tobago who are trying to invoke their genealogy to take responsibility for any children they may sire. “Be a man, man up, stand up,” she urged.

Alleyne-Toppin mulled aloud the hurt feelings of a child who was not accepted by his father, and who then grows up to age 45 years old and has his own children.

She recalled once witnessing a case where a man had denied fatherhood of a child, but upon taking a court-approved paternity test was deemed to be the parent, upon which she herself had urged the man’s wife to encourage him to support the child. “You never know when that child will bring you a glass of water,” she reasoned. A governmental colleague sagely chimed in, “Or save your life.”

Alleyne-Toppin then said that as a mother, on behalf of children, she hoped for salvation from “an enormous calamity”, “a symbol of Babylonian depravity” and “this cup of woe”.

Saying persons can claim their heritage, patrimony and genealogy, she urged, “Let us claim the children rather than claim the eminent office.”

She added, “I support the motion. I have no confidence in the Leader of the Opposition.”

Earlier Alleyne-Toppin told a tale of a girl raped by her father’s friend, getting pregnant, and then giving birth to a child who later grew up angry, arrogant and bombastic, but who is today “an aspirant”.

Alleyne-Toppin spoke in the absence of any Opposition MPs except Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner after an earlier Opposition walkout, and her speech was not reined in by Speaker Wade Mark.