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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

PM taking time with Baker

by

20140417

De­spite the pub­lic firestorm brew­ing over the mat­ter in­volv­ing her To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Del­mon Bak­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she will not act pre­ma­ture­ly on it.She made the com­ment a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, mo­ments af­ter a sur­prise birth­day lun­cheon in her ho­n­our at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's.A young man has re­port­ed to the po­lice that the min­is­ter al­leged­ly be­haved in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly to­wards him.Bak­er's min­is­te­r­i­al col­league, Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion Min­is­ter Rodger Samuel, has con­firmed that the same man vis­it­ed him with the com­plaint last week and that af­ter pray­ing with the al­leged vic­tim, he (Samuel) had sought to con­tact the PM on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, Samuel, who said the man came to him in his ca­pac­i­ty as a pas­tor, said af­ter a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was served on the ac­cuser, he de­cid­ed not to leave the mat­ter in the hands of the le­gal minds.Asked if she was aware of any gov­ern­ment min­is­ter hav­ing en­gaged in in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Apart from what I read in the me­dia, no min­is­ter has in­di­cat­ed any such mat­ter."She quick­ly added: "How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Bak­er spoke with me some time last week. He has made a re­port to the po­lice of pos­si­ble at­tempts at ex­tor­tion and I will say no more on that mat­ter which is un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed she was con­cerned about the al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Bak­er but in­sist­ed she "will not act pre­ma­ture­ly" as the mat­ter was un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion."It would be im­pru­dent, if not reck­less of me, to make any pro­nounce­ments on that mat­ter un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed," she in­sist­ed.Her com­ment seems to sug­gest she will be hold­ing her hand on mak­ing a swift de­ci­sion on pub­lic calls to fire Bak­er in the wake of the pub­lic furore over the al­le­ga­tions, as she has done with oth­er mem­bers of her par­ty who came un­der scruti­ny for var­i­ous in­dis­cre­tions.Most re­cent­ly, she fired for­mer Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh fol­low­ing claims of mis­con­duct aboard a Caribbean Air­lines flight from To­ba­go.

Fly­ing Squad leak dis­cussed

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so in­di­cat­ed yes­ter­day the con­tro­ver­sial re­lease of con­fi­den­tial re­ports on the re-es­tab­lish­ment of a new Fly­ing Squad in 2012 was dis­cussed at yes­ter­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing.She said both At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith would make state­ments on the is­sue. She ad­mit­ted she had not yet re­ceived the re­ports when it was re­leased in Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi last week."We were very sur­prised that we had not seen that re­port, nor had we been ad­vised that such a re­port was fi­nal­ly lodged," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.The Prime Min­is­ter, who cel­e­brates her 62nd birth­day on Tues­day, said her Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about the ac­tu­al leak­ing of the re­port and the rev­e­la­tions by Al-Rawi in re­leas­ing the doc­u­ments.

Asked if she shared Ram­lo­gan's view that Al-Rawi had com­mit­ted trea­son by dis­clos­ing con­tents of the re­port in Par­lia­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would re­ly on her lawyers to so ad­vise.

Yes­ter­day's 1.15 pm post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence was can­celled be­cause of the lun­cheon.The one-hour lun­cheon was the brain­child of deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who was the mas­ter of cer­e­mo­ny at the event. Speech­es were de­liv­ered by Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Mar­lene Coudray and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan. Among those who at­tend­ed were head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reynold Coop­er, while so­ca artiste Baron per­formed.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan was seen leav­ing the event with sacked min­is­ters Chan­dresh Shar­ma and Ra­mad­hars­ingh.Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts said the PM's birth­day lun­cheon was at no cost to tax­pay­ers."Ab­solute­ly not one cent of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey. It was per­son­al funds from a few in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­is­ers," he in­sist­ed. Roberts said the event was one for min­is­ters to ex­press their love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the Prime Min­is­ter and to al­so wish her a hap­py birth­day.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, said she was not to­tal­ly sur­prised by the sur­prise birth­day lun­cheon.

Axe fell quick­ly for some

In the sec­ond week of May 2011, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar act­ed swift­ly in sack­ing her first Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs, Mary King, be­cause of the in­ap­pro­pri­ate award of a $100,000 con­tract to the firm, Ix­anos, in which her fam­i­ly had an in­ter­est.Just over one year lat­er in Au­gust 2012, she al­so act­ed swift­ly do dis­miss Min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry Col­in Par­tap, who was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.Last month, the PM al­so moved quick­ly to sack Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour on board a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight from To­ba­go.

Caribbean Air­lines flight Ronelle Laid­low at­ten­dant re­port­ed to the po­lice Ra­mad­hars­ingh's hand touched her breast when he reached for her ID badge while on a flight to Pi­ar­co. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to that mat­ter are still in progress.And days lat­er, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of her Tourism Min­is­ter, Chan­dresh Shar­ma, af­ter a for­mer girl­friend re­port­ed to po­lice that he phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed her a few weeks ear­li­er at Grand Bazaar, Val­sayn. That mat­ter is al­so still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.


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