On this day, one year ago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar created history in Trinidad and Tobago by winning the internal elections of the UNC and becoming the first politician to unseat, in direct challenge, the founding leader of a major political party in Trinidad and Tobago. That triumph would prove to be the beginning of a phenomenon that would eventually come to be known as Kamlamania, a steadily growing surge of support behind a politician long considered a worthy but poorly regarded contender in local political sweepstakes that would usher in a year's worth of remarkable changes in this country.
It was a pivotal moment for the opposition party, the United National Congress, opening doors to conversation and collaboration that had been firmly shut and padlocked on both sides. Those talks eventually led to the formation of the coalition party, the People's Partnership. It was a pivotal moment for local politics, as more than a half-century's orientation toward absolute leadership was overturned and set on a new course of possibility. It was a pivotal moment for women in Trinidad and Tobago, not just because it was a woman who replaced founder Basdeo Panday as the political leader of the UNC, but because it raised the possibility that the glass ceiling on the highest publicly elected office in the land might also prove vulnerable to will, political savvy and patient hard work.
And it was, of course, a pivotal moment for Kamla Persad-Bissessar. She was able to shed the persona of the patient lady-in-waiting so elegantly and dramatically personified by the "No woman, no cry" era for a militant, carpe diem approach who rallied the support of other political leaders behind her for a successful charge to government that might easily have been accompanied by "Get up, stand up."
It is a simple matter of fact that the People's Partnership would not have been assembled without the skill, savvy and leadership of Kamla Persad-Bissessar. The political detritus littering the landscape of previous attempts to unite opposition parties against the PNM stands as absolute historical evidence of that.
It was today, one year ago, that a fundamental political change began, though some might better describe it as upheaval, and the long road that Kamla Persad-Bissessar trod through her party's hinterlands began to emerge into the light. It's appropriate to celebrate and note that accomplishment nationally, regardless of political alignment, because what the future Prime Minister began on this day was a basic rethinking of what it means to represent the people of Trinidad and Tobago and how that office would be contested in the future. If the electorate holds true to the abandonment of traditional political fealties they demonstrated first at the party level on January 24, 2010, and at the national level on May 24, 2010, then the conversation between voter and politician can no longer proceed on the same basis and with the same expectations that it has since 1962.
The spark that began just 52 weeks ago was capably fanned to consuming flame by campaign rhetoric, skilful use of social and conventional media and an unprecedented engagement with young voters when the People's Partnership coalition hit the campaign trail. That there have been missteps since then is also a matter of public record. Despite its relative inexperience in public office, some of the leading ministers in the administration-including the Prime Minister herself-have proven to be appallingly error-prone and slow to retract obvious gaffes.
It is here, in building a reputation for leadership to match her deserved credentials in challenging well-entrenched political rivals that Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar must make her mark next. She must corral and harness the abundant testosterone in her Cabinet to her stated goals of service and delivery. Her success in managing a rambunctiously wilful Cabinet may well prove to provide the grounding example for the next generation of young politicians and ambitious women who choose to set their compass by the work she does while in office.