THREAT ON SPEAKER’S LIFE

House Speaker Barry Sinanan has reported to the Commissioner of Police a threat on his life. The threat was made via a letter sent to the Speaker’s Office last week. The letter bore a name and an address. In the one-page letter, the writer suggested that East Indians form a “secret society” to assassinate persons like Sinanan who “put obstacles in their way” and who sided with the Black community to suppress East Indians. “When Indians speak out against racial discrimination you try to put a clamp on them...You are nothing but a tool of the PNM, (which the writer renamed, “Promoters of Niggerism Movement”). It is time Indians form a secret society to assassinate those who put obstacles in their way. I am sure you would be the first to go,” the writer stated. The writer attacked Afro-Trinidadians and the PNM, which he accused of implementing a policy of apartheid.  He lamented that “10,000 Indians lost their jobs in Caroni.” And he also referred to the recent COSTAATT controversy and to the debate over the UWI, saying that a policy of  “ethnic cleansing” was being implemented by the PNM. “Trinidad and Tobago is 45 percent Negroes, 45 percent Indians and ten percent mixed races. Yet in the army, navy, TTEC, TSTT, NFM, Petrotrin etc, 95 percent of the workers are niggers,” the writer said.

Stating that this country was ruled by “apes, chimps and monkeys,” the writer launched a scurrilous attack on Sinanan: “You are an Indian with a nigger heart. A damn disgrace to your race and ancestors. You are being used by the niggers like they used Kamal and other stupid Indians.” The writer concluded that the Speaker was being used “just like the monkey uses the cat’s paws to haul chestnuts out of the fire.” The letter which attacks Sinanan follows several of Sinanan’s rulings against the UNC in Parliament and growing arguments in the society about race. The discussion has been fuelled by an examination of certain state programmes like URP and CEPEP and state agencies such as COSTAATT, Petrotrin and UWI. The Opposition UNC has been leading the charge against Government accusing it of racial discrimination and victimisation in the recruitment of persons involved in these programmes. The poison letter also comes on the heels of a clash between the Speaker and Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday in the Parliament two Fridays ago. Speaking during a UNC “Meet the People” forum, Panday vowed to put more pressure on Sinanan this week. Accusing Sinanan of protecting the Government, Panday asked: “Can you imagine he wants to suspend me from Parliament?...Would you believe this pompous gadahar (donkey) want to tell man like Ganga Singh and Kelvin Ramnath how to make speech?” He added: “I think he knows what he is doing. I think he knows he is a part of a racist Government in power and his conscience is gnawing away at the insides.”