Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan yes­ter­day is­sued a state­ment in which he ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said he an­tic­i­pat­ed in ex­cess of 30,000 peo­ple at Tues­day's event to com­mem­o­rate her elec­tion as the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader. The UNC, which is the lead­ing par­ty in the five-mem­ber Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, cel­e­brates the sec­ond an­niver­sary of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's elec­tion as po­lit­i­cal leader with a ral­ly at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va.

Ram­bachan said that last year, more than 30,000 peo­ple gath­ered to cel­e­brate the elec­tion of the new po­lit­i­cal leader, which was "a clear state­ment that the par­ty mem­ber­ship not on­ly en­dorsed the leader, but al­so in­tend­ed to re­main in pow­er for a very long time to come." Ac­cord­ing to Ram­bachan, the mem­ber­ship of the par­ty strong­ly sup­ports the lead­er­ship of Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as she seeks to cor­rect the ills of the past, to bring sta­bil­i­ty to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, and to cre­ate the con­di­tions for a sus­tain­able fu­ture, one that will be marked by pros­per­i­ty for all. Ram­bachan said the prime min­is­ter's bold ini­tia­tives, whether in terms of the man­age­ment of crime, or in the ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, has de­fined her lead­er­ship style.

"In spite of all of this, she has main­tained a com­mon touch, and has been di­rect­ing re­sources to­wards the al­le­vi­a­tion of pover­ty, and the sat­is­fac­tion of the ba­sic needs of peo­ple," he said. The prime min­is­ter's com­mon touch, Ram­bachan said, had been marked with­in the last few days with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cer­tifi­cates of com­fort, hous­es, farm­lands and the open­ing of new wa­ter projects. He said that as far as the Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned, qual­i­ty of life is­sues re­mained a pri­ma­ry con­cern. The UNC's deputy po­lit­i­cal leader al­so praised his leader's "tremen­dous po­lit­i­cal acu­men in main­tain­ing the part­ner­ship by con­sen­sus build­ing, shar­ing the lead­er­ship role and ad­her­ence to the col­lec­tive­ly agreed Fyz­abad de­c­la­ra­tion."

He said her po­lit­i­cal acu­men had "stunned the crit­ics who thought that the coali­tion would not have held as firm­ly as it cur­rent­ly holds." He said the so­lid­i­ty of the coali­tion had oc­curred be­cause the prime min­is­ter had been able to get the lead­ers to co­a­lesce around a shared vi­sion for the na­tion-which was pros­per­i­ty, so­cial eq­ui­ty, jus­tice for all and equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty. At a per­son­al lev­el, Ram­bachan said that he was strong in his ad­mi­ra­tion for the po­lit­i­cal leader's abil­i­ty to take tough de­ci­sions where the na­tion­al in­ter­est was con­cerned and to do so with a lev­el of courage and de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed which over­rides par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est.