Sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, ad­mir­ers of our Prime Min­is­ter and I be­lieve any nor­mal pa- rent and av­er­age cit­i­zen must be ex­treme­ly proud of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The Prime Min­is­ter's demon­strat­ed com­pas­sion, lead­er­ship and warmth in ac­cept­ing the apol­o­gy of the young girl who lev­elled a se­vere and vile at­tack on her, stands as tes­ti­mo­ny for our coun­try that the days of Er­ic "not a damn dog bark" Williams, Bas­deo "do them be­fore they do you" Pan­day and Patrick "the PNM nev­er for-gets its en­e­mies" Man­ning are be­hind us.

In­stead, we have to­day a woman as our Prime Min­is­ter who is clear in her de­ci­sion mak­ing, de­ci­sive in her ac­tions, de­ter­mined in her mis­sion to up­lift and de­vel­op T&T, and hu­man enough to re­mem­ber that com­pas­sion is per­haps one of the most re­spect­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics of good lead­er­ship. Un­like the PNM which im­me­di­ate­ly found a way to pick up a few cheap points in this whole fi­as­co, the Prime Min­is­ter in­stead saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to not con­demn a young woman for her mis­take, but to ac­cept her apol­o­gy and per­haps, in so do­ing, en­gage her in now tak­ing for­ward a mes­sage of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Hats off to our Prime Min­is­ter. Per­haps the PNM would learn from her grace un­der fire.

Jairam Bho­la

Via e-mail