Richard Lord

Ail­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ues to run the af­fairs of Gov­ern­ment from her hos­pi­tal bed. This was re­vealed by For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. Per­sad-Bisses­sar spent her sec­ond con­sec­u­tive night at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre af­ter check­ing in with swollen feet Wednes­day morn­ing and com­plain­ing of dizzi­ness and ex­haus­tion. Yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a very re­mark­able per­son who "con­tin­ues to work in the in­ter­est of the coun­try. She is a very strong-mind­ed and strong-will per­son."

Ram­bachan added: "It seems to us that na­tion­al du­ty is in fact her very first or­der of busi­ness as she con­tin­ues to di­rect the af­fairs of her Gov­ern­ment." Ear­li­er, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while rest­ing com­fort­ably at the med­ical in­sti­tu­tion, "has been sub­ject to nu­mer­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al as­sess­ments and they have all proved to be nor­mal or close to nor­mal for a per­son of her stand­ing." But notwith­stand­ing that in­for­ma­tion, Khan could not guar­an­tee her re­lease to­day. "She may be dis­charged to­mor­row (to­day) pend­ing the re­sults of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions," he added. "What we are look­ing at is to see if the swelling of the feet is a lo­cal prob­lem or a sys­temic prob­lem. It seems to be a lo­cal prob­lem," he said.

Re­ports by some me­dia hous­es yes­ter­day (not the T&T Guardian) of the Prime Min­is­ter hav­ing un­der­gone surgery to her feet and be­ing in the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the fa­cil­i­ty were de­nied by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, who al­so spoke at the news con­fer­ence, called on cit­i­zens to "con­tin­ue to pray for the swift re­cov­ery" of Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said prayers cre­at­ed mir­a­cles and "we want our Prime Min­is­ter to be well as soon as pos­si­ble." A state­ment from Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­vis­er on pub­lic en­gage­ments, Lisa Ghany, said the PM "con­tin­ues to un­der­go a se­ries of med­ical as­sess­ments."

It added that her physi­cians have ad­vised that the PM "un­der­take a com­pre­hen­sive med­ical which ne­ces­si­tat­ed her stay at the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty." It added: "Her physi­cians fur­ther ad­vised that the de­ci­sion to ex­tend her stay was on­ly out of an abun­dance of cau­tion fol­low­ing a mild al­ler­gic re­ac­tion to the dye ad­min­is­tered dur­ing an eval­u­a­tion." The state­ment added: "Dur­ing this pe­ri­od the Prime Min­is­ter has main­tained the per­for­mance of her du­ties while be­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly up­dat­ed by her Cab­i­net col­leagues."

It said the Prime Min­is­ter, while at her hos­pi­tal bed, held dis­cus­sions on Gov­ern­ment busi­ness with sev­er­al min­is­ters. Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was among the of­fi­cials who vis­it­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day.