The Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) has con­demned com­ments made by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy last Thurs­day, de­scrib­ing the re­marks as di­vi­sive and harm­ful to na­tion­al uni­ty.

In a state­ment, NJAC said Mar­celle’s com­ments could on­ly serve to sow di­vi­sion and dis­cord be­tween the coun­try’s two ma­jor racial groups and per­pet­u­ate what it de­scribed as the colo­nial lega­cy of di­vide and rule. The or­gan­i­sa­tion said such rhetoric be­longed to the pol­i­tics of the 1950s and 1960s and had no place in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mod­ern po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment.

NJAC’s re­sponse fol­lows re­marks made by Mar­celle at a PNM meet­ing at the Laven­tille Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where he ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of be­ing hos­tile to­wards Afro-Trinida­di­ans and com­mu­ni­ties that have tra­di­tion­al­ly sup­port­ed the PNM. Speak­ing to sup­port­ers, Mar­celle al­leged that the gov­ern­ing par­ty had dis­re­gard­ed African com­mu­ni­ties and PNM sup­port­ers.