Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu has con­demned Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der for sug­gest­ing that the two year old child killed this morn­ing in Bel­mont would still be alive had the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion been in force.

Bood­hu slammed Alexan­der’s com­ments as “di­vi­sive, in­ept, racist and dis­re­spect­ful,” ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor of ex­ploit­ing a na­tion­al tragedy to score po­lit­i­cal points and de­fend the con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion which was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this year.

The crit­i­cism came af­ter Alexan­der is­sued a fiery state­ment fol­low­ing the killings in Bel­mont, blam­ing what he called “bad pol­i­tics” in PNM-held com­mu­ni­ties for the vi­o­lence.