While the People's Partnership (PP) was living a public relations disaster over its directorship appointment of 31-year-old Reshmi Ramnarine, the woman's life and reputation has been shattered.Ramnarine, the former week-long SIA director, has been forced to flee the country after reportedly receiving several death threats. Her elevation to national attention has indeed compromised her professional and personal reputation.
Family members said she became the subject of public ridicule, apart from the obvious security risks, after personal pictures of herself, her home, and her parents' home were published in the daily newspapers.And while the SIA/SSA debacle may have hit the new PP Government hard, the woman's life has been hit harder, according to family members.Ramnarine has made no public comment on the issue.
She did not lie on a resume which Government officials claims was the subject of mis-information, sources said.Ramnarine was elevated to a post on a recommendation made to chair of the National Security Council (NSC), Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. She became a victim of the same people who put her there-National Security Minister John Sandy sought self-preservation and Legal Affairs Minister Prakash Ramadhar apologised for the error. Consequently, the members of the NSC distanced themselves from a blanket approval of her appointment, save Persad-Bissessar who asked the country to "move on" from the mess.
The questions that remain unanswered are:
• Who really recommended Ramnarine? Government sources have named a deputy director.
• Given the fact that she did not claim to have a degree in her resume, who was the person or persons directing Sandy to say that she in fact had a degree and was suitably qualified?
• Or, why was such a senior position offered to her in the first place?
The Govt found itself in hot water after Ramnarine was deemed unfit to hold the post of interim director of the intelligence unit by the Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley. He claimed Ramnarine was young, unqualified and without the requisite experience required for such a post.Even so, Ramnarine's family members said the bigger issue was why she was "so viciously targeted," to use one close relative's words, in the first place.
'She has been hounded'
Close family members insisted she was the victim of a vicious personal agenda by senior members of the media fraternity attached to a prominent daily newspaper (not the Guardian), who once used to be her very best friends between 2006-2007. "She has been hounded by the reporters who were once her friends," a relative claimed.
The media practitioners were known to be close friends and "liming partners" with Ramnarine and the photos of her in a causal manner which were used in the newspaper were taken back then, a family source said.After Ramnarine ended her friendship with one of the media practitioners, she struck up a relationship with a relative of another media practitioner.After Ramnarine ended her friendship with the media workers and their relatives in 2007, she cut off all contact with them, but certain individuals kept trying to maintain contact.
On her application for a job at the newspaper, a family source disclosed, she had been complaining that her job at the SIA was getting "too dangerous and stressful" and was ready to move on.She unwittingly did this, family members said, trusting her friends.Family members have now retained the services of a lawyer who is now looking to see if there was any questionable action on the part of the newspaper.