00:00Emancipation Support Committee Representative Shabaka Kambon tells the Morning Edition the
00:06organization rejects suggestions that it failed to properly manage the jering from the crowd
00:13after the Prime Minister did not show up at the event. She later said there would always
00:19be another opportunity for those wishing to direct insults at her to do so.
00:24It's unfortunate because I think the Prime Minister, when she herself has the opportunity
00:29to view that footage, will see things differently. I'm pretty sure that that would be the case.
00:35I mean, I think this is perhaps a knee-jerk reaction from our Prime Minister based on reports
00:42that she may have been given by, you know, members of her own party, people from the outside,
00:46social media, who knows.
00:48Kambon also responds to the Prime Minister's concerns that the committee did not do enough
00:54to discourage the crowd's reaction to what Culture Minister Michelle Benjamin, saying
00:59the organization acted appropriately throughout the event.
01:03But the facts are, if you look squarely at the videos in the morning, when the Minister
01:09of Culture is booed, I personally asked, I personally let the crowd know that this is not the appropriate
01:15moment for that kind of thing, and it brought the thing down.
01:20Kambon also addresses the decision to rename Emancipation Day as African Emancipation Day,
01:27saying the Emancipation Support Committee was not consulted before the change was announced
01:32by former Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley in April of 2024 and implemented on August 1st of that year.
01:40It's an unnecessary change.
01:43It's an unnecessary change.
01:45Yes, it was unnecessary.
01:47The, you know, emancipation is what it is.
01:50It's an important step for humankind, the end of chattel enslavement, the right to own somebody
01:57as property, to do with them as you will, a genocidal regime in which people died in a space of
02:04six
02:04to nine years, anything that would further polarise this country is not something that we would want to be part
02:11of.
02:12Nicole M. Romany, TV6 News.
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