Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der has de­fend­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s con­tro­ver­sial use of the term “one per cent” dur­ing Wednes­day’s de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of State of Emer­gency (SoE), ar­gu­ing that the phrase is glob­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with wealth and priv­i­lege rather than any spe­cif­ic eth­nic group.

Je­re­mie’s com­ments have trig­gered strong crit­i­cism from mem­bers of T&T’s Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, af­ter he warned that Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus would ex­tend to “those who de­scribe them­selves in per­cent­ages, such as the one per cent,” a phrase that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been linked to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud was among those con­demn­ing the re­marks, de­scrib­ing them as dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, hate­ful and racist, while call­ing on Je­re­mie to ex­er­cise greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in his pub­lic state­ments.