The United National Congress National Women’s Arm has said that there is no need for Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to apologise for her comments about the ancestral name of Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Camille Robinson-Regis.

According to a statement from the organisation, the PNM’s Women’s League is trying to create a distraction because their Party has been cornered on paedophilia and police investigations into corruption and misbehaviour, so they are trying to use race.

They also added that what was said by the Opposition Leader was factual and not racist. 

Check out the full statement below:

“In a desperate, weak and feeble attempt by the PNM’s Women’s League to create a distraction from their Party being cornered on pedophilia and police investigations into corruption and misbehaviour, they are trying to use race. In truth and in fact, the real perpetrators of race- baiting and abuse are the front line members of their own Party!

The level of double standards and hypocrisy from the PNM Women’s League knows no boundaries. The only time they speak out on anything is not when it is in the interest of the country but the interest of their inner circle the Cosa Nostra.

It is as if the PNM’s Women League’s main purpose is to attack other women! Even the woman who has done most for women’s advancement in the entire history of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar — the first woman Attorney General, the first woman leader of a parliamentary party, the first woman Leader of Opposition, the first woman Prime Minister, and the first woman Head of Government to Chair the Commonwealth globally. No one has broken more glass ceilings, or paved the way for other women’s success than Kamla Persad-Bissessar. 

On a public platform two weeks ago Camille Robinson-Regis made vile, veiled and not so veiled attacks on Kamla Persad-Bissessar, using Persad-Bissessar’s middle name as to race-bait, ridicule and provide “humour” for those who find ancestral names as “Susheila” to be comical. No one condemned the PNM for that clearly racist behaviour.

Indeed, we call on Camille Robinson-Region, the PNM Women’s League and the PNM to apologise to the entire country for that racial attack. On Thursday, Mrs. Persad-Bissessar rightfully called out Robinson-Regis for attempting to mock and heap scorn on the name ” Susheila”. Mrs. Persad-Bissessar stated that she was proud of her ancestral heritage that was kept alive through her name, like that of many others. 

She referred to Camille Robinson-Regis’s name as having been passed on to others by colonial masters, and that they still carry on those traditions up to today, even to the extent of ridiculing ancestral names! That is not racist it is factual. Come down from there PNM Women’s League and stop trying to distract and deflect from the real issues! Apologise to the country for your racial attack! It is despicable. Your party and government has serious questions to answer, and your racism and race-baiting will not absolve you.”