In the first part of this ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, pub­lished in yes­ter­day's Sun­day Guardian, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and women's and chil­dren's rights ac­tivist Ver­na St Rose-Greaves said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not in charge of her gov­ern­ment. In this con­clud­ing in­stall­ment, she talks to the T&T Guardian's Pub­lic Af­fairs Ed­i­tor Sheila Ram­per­sad about the true na­ture of the chal­lenge fac­ing the PM.

Ver­na St Rose-Greaves says the time has come to move be­yond gos­sip and scan­dalous whis­pers about the phys­i­cal and men­tal health of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and treat pro­duc­tive­ly with what­ev­er chal­lenges the Prime Min­is­ter is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing. If the Prime Min­is­ter does have a prob­lem, she in­sists, she is not the first and will not be the last.

"If in fact the Prime Min­is­ter has a prob­lem which we are all talk­ing about, whis­per­ing about and mak­ing scan­dal about, let us treat with it, if it im­ping­ing on her per­for­mance as Prime Min­is­ter. The prob­lem can be con­tained, with a lot of sup­port and help. We must not on­ly treat with her di­a­betes and high blood pres­sure. "I re­mem­ber when Tim [Gopeesingh] said peas fall on her foot. What is that about?

"If some­body is not well, they're not well, and we have to put things in place to help her so she can per­form at op­ti­mum, so that she can­not have peo­ple use those chal­lenges to con­trol her, to make de­ci­sions on her be­half, to ad­vise in ways that are not pro­duc­tive and not in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try."

St Rose-Greaves spoke ex­clu­sive­ly with the T&T Guardian last Wednes­day. She served as a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor from March 2 to April 8, 2010 and cam­paigned for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion in the runup to the gen­er­al elec­tion.

On June 27, 2011, 13 months af­ter the PP formed the Gov­ern­ment, she was ap­point­ed a gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor. She served as a mem­ber of Cab­i­net as Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment un­til June 24, 2012 when she was dis­missed cab­i­net in favour of for­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray dur­ing a June 23 cab­i­net reshuf­fle.

St Rose-Greaves agreed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar's life is more close­ly scru­ti­nised than for­mer prime min­is­ters'. "When the Prime Min­is­ter says that her life is the most scru­ti­nised, it is true, be­cause peo­ple spend time whis­per­ing about it.

"I am say­ing the way to take her pow­er back is to take away the se­cre­cy, take away the ran­som they want to hold her un­der. Come with it, face up to it. There are peo­ple will­ing to stand with her and to help her.

"Fe­male lead­er­ship is not easy. I think the time has come for us to say some­thing and do some­thing about it." A qual­i­fied so­cial work­er trained in coun­selling, child de­vel­op­ment, men­tal health, and com­mu­ni­ty work, St Rose-Greaves was adamant that pub­lic dis­clo­sure is "the way we must go" and that the so­ci­ety must stop "beat­ing up" on peo­ple who have chal­lenges that af­fect their over­all well­be­ing.

"We can­not beat up on peo­ple be­cause of their weak­ness­es. We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help and one way of do­ing that is to re­move the cloak of se­cre­cy, stig­ma, dis­crim­i­na­tion and ug­li­ness that we as­so­ciate with these is­sues. This is not about a per­son alone; it is about a coun­try."

Re­spond­ing to whether she felt the so­ci­ety is suf­fi­cient­ly ma­ture to re­act re­spect­ful­ly to a pub­lic dis­clo­sure, she said, "As a whole the so­ci­ety may not be ma­ture enough-but it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help the so­ci­ety grow up. There are suf­fi­cient peo­ple who will help her. Peo­ple love the woman; there are suf­fi­cient peo­ple who can stand up and help the so­ci­ety ma­ture.

"There are peo­ple in lead­er­ship all over the world who are bipo­lar, who suf­fer de­pres­sion, all kinds of things, and if that in­ter­feres with how they per­form in pub­lic of­fice, I think we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and the peo­ple around them have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, to en­sure that they take their med­ica­tion and that they func­tion at an op­ti­mum.

"It's the same thing with di­et; some peo­ple are gorg­ing them­selves, not look­ing af­ter them­selves. Some think it is a good thing to boast that they're not sleep­ing. You need to sleep, and some of the ir­ra­tional state­ments and de­ci­sions are per­haps hinged to that.

Your men­tal well­ness is not up to mark when you don't sleep. You're an­gry and frus­trat­ed. You just have to look at the pub­lic out­bursts, the ar­ro­gance and vex­a­tion, as if we can­not solve any­thing peace­ful­ly. It's a lev­el of ill­ness that we have to be pre­pared to treat with in this so­ci­ety."

She iden­ti­fied a broad prob­lem with cur­rent gov­er­nance in T&T where greed, vi­cious­ness and hate char­ac­terise re­ac­tions to emer­gent na­tion­al is­sues. "When you func­tion with hate, you turn in­to what you hate. I think this Gov­ern­ment start­ed off with so much hate for the PNM that they don't even recog­nise they have be­come the PNM and worse than the PNM.

The very things they were com­plain­ing about-ar­ro­gance, lack of em­pa­thy, ne­glect of cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties-are what we are see­ing. They have to move away from that hate. They have to dis­tance them­selves from that bile. When you lis­ten to the rant­i­ng of Gov­ern­ment, those are not things peo­ple should be say­ing."

The pub­lic con­tin­ues to hope for some­thing bet­ter, she said, and Per­sad-Bisses­sar must speak to the pop­u­la­tion from a deep­er place.

"One ma­jor strength the Prime Min­is­ter has is her peo­ple skills. But when she talks about her peo­ple, it must not on­ly be her con­stituents, it must be all of T&T. She must be brave and she must stand up and speak to peo­ple from a deep­er place than from where she is speak­ing from now. She seems to be on­ly able to reach peo­ple in big ral­lies, with lak­ouray and dra­ma.

"There is a gap, and ei­ther Mr Warn­er or Mr Mooni­lal would get up and say some­thing and just cause con­fu­sion, and when peo­ple make noise, she comes for­ward and us­es their words, takes her lead from what they say, rather than as­sert­ing her­self as the au­thor­i­ty fig­ure, as the one who is in charge. Peo­ple con­tin­ue to hope for some­thing bet­ter, but peo­ple no longer trust, and they are get­ting no re­al re­as­sur­ance from her.

"We can­not con­tin­ue like this. It's as if pow­er is an aphro­disi­ac to many of these men. We vot­ed for some­thing dif­fer­ent. I en­tered a cam­paign for some­thing dif­fer­ent, to sup­port her, be­cause I thought sup­port­ing her gave this coun­try an op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn a cor­ner." But can peo­ple who are hand­i­capped be­cause of health chal­lenges be ex­pect­ed to help them­selves, giv­en that they are al­ready hand­i­capped?

St Rose-Greaves said her ex­pe­ri­ence in coun­selling proved to her that: "Any­one can be helped with care and treat­ment, and if there are peo­ple around you who un­der­stand your chal­lenges and know how to man­age them."