In a hard-hit­ting ex­clu­sive Q&A with the Sun­day Guardian, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar­did not hold back from send­ing a clear mes­sage about how she in­tends to han­dle the fifth year ofher ad­min­is­tra­tion. This in­ter­view gives an in­sight in­to many as­pect­sof the ups and downs of her tenure, and re­veals that she is ready to turn on­to the road to the nextgen­er­al elec­tion.

Ms Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, what is your biggest chal­lenge be­ing Prime Min­is­ter of T&T to­day?

Oh, there have been quite a few great chal­lenges which, with fo­cus and stay­ing ded­i­cat­ed to a vi­sion of pros­per­i­ty for all, we have man­aged quite well.One of those chal­lenges has been to en­sure that, as we worked to de­liv­er on the needs of all cit­i­zens, we al­so bal­anced our need to com­mu­ni­cate with all cit­i­zens on how work is pro­gress­ing.

There have al­so been chal­lenges in man­ag­ing a di­verse coali­tion and en­sur­ing that there is a strong and com­fort­able bal­ance be­tween be­ing con­sul­ta­tive, but al­so de­ci­sive in do­ing what is right for all cit­i­zens.There have been dis­agree­ments over the years, but the proof of suc­cess is not in the dis­agree­ments, but rather in the fact that we still stand to­geth­er, with a shared ob­jec­tive of de­liv­er­ing a bet­ter T&T to­day, and for the fu­ture.

All told, how­ev­er, what­ev­er the chal­lenges that have come and will come, as a strong­ly unit­ed and sta­ble gov­ern­ment, we are ready to man­age them, over­come them, and de­liv­er the bet­ter na­tion we promised.

Prime Min­is­ter, have you achieved the goals that you had per­son­al­ly set for the peo­ple of T&T pri­or to the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion?

I am pleased to say that we are al­most there. If we look at goals set by our man­i­festo in 2010, I can con­firm that of the 260 pledges we made, our Gov­ern­ment has been able to de­liv­er on 90 per cent of them. That's a re­mark­able achieve­ment for two sig­nif­i­cant rea­sons.

First­ly, no oth­er gov­ern­ment has ever com­mit­ted its man­i­festo, through Par­lia­ment, as its pub­lic pol­i­cy agen­da, and stuck to it. Fur­ther­more, no oth­er gov­ern­ment has ever re­mained so loy­al to its promis­es that it can ac­count to the na­tion that in four of the five years in this term, we've al­ready de­liv­ered 90 per cent of what we promised.

In ad­di­tion to those, there were some com­mit­ments I made which were very close to my heart. One is the suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion of the Chil­dren's Life Fund where 88 chil­dren's lives have been saved...that's 88 fam­i­lies who didn't have to suf­fer the hu­mil­i­a­tion of des­per­ate­ly seek­ing funds for ex­pen­sive med­ical care, and that's 88 fam­i­lies who didn't lose their pre­cious lit­tle ones be­cause of not be­ing able to ac­cess life-sav­ing med­ical care on ac­count of mon­ey.

An­oth­er is that by the end of our first term, we would have made the sec­ondary school sys­tem tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven, with chil­dren from forms one to five hav­ing their own lap­tops.And of course, the suc­cess­ful launch of a na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion which seals our com­mit­ment to cit­i­zens that they will al­ways have a pro­tect­ed right to share their ideas with the Gov­ern­ment on what they be­lieve is best for a se­cure fu­ture.

We al­so have an in­creas­ing­ly com­mand­ing pres­ence both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. To­day, T&T con­tin­ues its lead­er­ship role in Cari­com and is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we are high­ly re­spect­ed in oth­er re­gion­al group­ings as well as in in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra such as the Com­mon­wealth and the Unit­ed Na­tions. The fact that the Pres­i­dent of Chi­na and the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States have come to us, and Cana­da host­ed us to an of­fi­cial vis­it are all in­di­ca­tions of the kind of in­ter­na­tion­al es­teem we have earned for our cit­i­zens over the past four years.

Ac­cord­ing to the polls, Madam PM, you are still very pop­u­lar among the cit­i­zens. How­ev­er, some of your min­is­ters have not re­ceived a favourable rat­ing. How do you in­tend to treat with min­is­te­r­i­al mishaps as the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion gets clos­er?

I am deeply hum­bled by the re­sults of that poll. It's good news, es­pe­cial­ly since it was com­mis­sioned by the me­dia and con­duct­ed by a re­spect­ed in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion. But this is not about me or how well I do. This is about the peo­ple and what they feel.

So, if the peo­ple are say­ing they are pleased, we are in­deed heart­ened by their en­dorse­ment. It tells us that, notwith­stand­ing a steady bar­rage of un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed re­sis­tance from the Op­po­si­tion on a num­ber of pub­lic pol­i­cy is­sues, the pas­sage of time has proven to cit­i­zens that the Gov­ern­ment has in fact been work­ing in their best in­ter­est.

Re­gard­ing oth­ers in this ad­min­is­tra­tion, let me just say that we work as a team and each mem­ber of the team un­der­stands that our top pri­or­i­ty is de­liv­ery on our promis­es and meet­ing the needs of cit­i­zens. I think I have con­vinc­ing­ly shown the na­tion that where tough de­ci­sions are re­quired, I will not shirk my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and that com­mit­ment shall re­main.

When we took of­fice, we had to be­gin work­ing im­me­di­ate­ly on turn­ing around a de­clin­ing econ­o­my, falling rev­enues, a weak­en­ing en­er­gy sec­tor, ram­pant cor­rup­tion, and an ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor that lacked a true vi­sion for our chil­dren and the fu­ture, among oth­er ma­jor is­sues of course.

To­day, just four years lat­er, glob­al mon­i­tor­ing agen­cies like the IMF and Moody's ac­knowl­edge our re-en­er­gised econ­o­my, sta­bil­i­ty and strong cred­it rat­ing. From de­cline, we are now in a po­si­tion to project growth of 2.5 per cent this year and three per cent in 2015.

Our for­eign re­serves are in ex­cess of US$10 bil­lion, our Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund is now a strong 20 per cent of GDP, our en­er­gy in­dus­try is on the re­bound, and for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment has moved from a low US$549 mil­lion in 2010, to US$1.831 bil­lion in 2011, to an all-time high of US$2.452 bil­lion in 2012, and pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures for 2013 show US$1.713 bil­lion.

We have cre­at­ed more jobs for our cit­i­zens than pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions, and there will be more as we con­tin­ue suc­ceed­ing in eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. One pro­posed project in San Fer­nan­do alone would cre­ate 2,000 new jobs. To­day, the na­tion­al un­em­ploy­ment fig­ure stands at 3.5 per cent–which in eco­nom­ic terms means we've passed the full em­ploy­ment thresh­old. And we have worked hard to bring down in­fla­tion from dou­ble dig­its to 3.7 per cent. We con­tin­ue to lead the re­gion as an eco­nom­ic gi­ant.

But let me make the point that our work must con­tin­ue to sus­tain such tremen­dous progress. Based on where we have brought our na­tion in just four years, my pledge is that our coun­try will wit­ness an in­crease in the lev­el of de­vel­op­ment and new ini­tia­tives that are un­par­al­leled in any time of our na­tion's his­to­ry. And that, ul­ti­mate­ly, will be the true mea­sure of the job to which I ded­i­cate my­self com­plete­ly.

Are you re­al­ly sat­is­fied with the per­for­mance of your min­is­ters? If not, how do you in­tend to deal with this?

Well, to say "sat­is­fied" means to be­come com­pla­cent; we can­not ever be­come com­pla­cent. I will nev­er be com­plete­ly sat­is­fied, even with 100 per cent de­liv­ery. In a world that is evolv­ing faster than at any oth­er time in his­to­ry, there will al­ways be more to do. We have to meet the myr­i­ad needs of a com­plex pop­u­la­tion and every need is im­por­tant to us. The whole point of gov­ern­ment is to im­prove the lives of the peo­ple and we are con­stant­ly work­ing to do that.

In light of all the min­is­te­r­i­al mis­steps, do you plan to es­tab­lish a code of ethics or con­duct for your min­is­ters?

I want to re­mind you of what I told ALL my min­is­ters on May 26, 2010, when our first Cab­i­net was in­stalled: "We must ac­cept no medi­oc­rity. Nei­ther must we con­tribute to it in any way. There must be no room for ar­ro­gance. We must be faith­ful to a lead­er­ship style that is firm but hum­ble, pas­sion­ate and im­pa­tient for great achieve­ments but ever con­scious of the cor­rect pro­ce­dures." I re­main com­mit­ted to that and hold every mem­ber of Cab­i­net to that.

How do you re­spond to claims that you are afraid to re­move AG Ram­lo­gan in the face of al­le­ga­tions with re­spect to E-mail­gate, Sec­tion 34, and the prison scan­dal, and calls from sev­er­al quar­ters for him to be fired?

The records would show that I make de­ci­sions based on an ex­am­i­na­tion of all the facts, and no one is above the law. It is in the in­ter­est of the Op­po­si­tion to keep de­mand­ing that I re­move min­is­ters. Over the past four years, there has been a pat­tern to keep try­ing to get rid of min­is­ters one by one.

My track record is clear–if a min­is­ter has to go, she or he will go. But such de­ci­sions will be made on­ly af­ter a con­sid­er­a­tion of all the rel­e­vant facts. Let me as­sure you that for as long as I am Prime Min­is­ter, there will be NO FEAR what­so­ev­er in mak­ing any de­ci­sion that ben­e­fits the peo­ple of T&T. And in say­ing that, I al­so reaf­firm my com­mit­ment to act in the best in­ter­est of cit­i­zens, not by ran­dom, ill-con­ceived, un­quan­ti­fied and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions by the Op­po­si­tion.

Has lead­ing by con­sen­sus worked? If so, how do you ac­count for so many min­is­te­r­i­al mis­steps? Do you think that you may want to re­con­sid­er your style of lead­er­ship?

Yes, it has worked, and I will tell you ex­act­ly why. Con­sen­sus by its very na­ture means that we must dis­cuss our ideas with stake­hold­ers and ar­rive at a con­clu­sion where we do not sac­ri­fice our guid­ing prin­ci­ples, but rather ar­rive at a point where we can all agree that a plan will work in the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

What this has meant for us is that we have opened up the Gov­ern­ment to the high­est lev­el of trans­paren­cy and pub­lic in­ter­ven­tion than at any oth­er time in our his­to­ry. What hap­pened as a re­sult is that steps along the way where is­sues re­quired fur­ther work, which in past gov­ern­ments could have been hid­den, were open for pub­lic scruti­ny. And where the pub­lic saw these is­sues, we didn't at any point hide from the facts; we ac­tu­al­ly moved with greater de­ter­mi­na­tion to achieve our ob­jec­tives.

That said, lead­ing a coali­tion gov­ern­ment re­quires care­ful and in­tri­cate co-or­di­na­tion and from time to time, peo­ple make mis­takes. But again, this ad­min­is­tra­tion is the most trans­par­ent we have ever had, so while peo­ple see the mis­takes made, enough time has passed for them to al­so see that ob­jec­tives have been achieved.

More than that, what dis­tin­guish­es our gov­ern­ment from oth­ers is that when we make a mis­take, we ac­knowl­edge it and take im­me­di­ate cor­rec­tive ac­tion–al­so a new stan­dard brought by this ad­min­is­tra­tion.So, yes, I am hap­py with my style of lead­er­ship and based on the poll you men­tioned ear­li­er, it ap­pears that the peo­ple ap­prove of my com­mit­ment to hear their views, re­main firm­ly con­nect­ed to what they want for their lives to suc­ceed, and then act in their best in­ter­est.

Is there any truth to a ca­bal op­er­at­ing with­in the PP Cab­i­net?

There is no ca­bal. Un­like oth­er prime min­is­ters, I have worked on the ba­sis of dis­cus­sion and con­sen­sus. I con­sult with all my min­is­ters on im­por­tant is­sues and we make col­lec­tive de­ci­sions. That con­sul­ta­tive process is why our Gov­ern­ment has been so suc­cess­ful in de­liv­er­ing to the peo­ple. I can as­sure that there is NO CA­BAL, but con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers, and pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in gov­ern­ment de­ci­sion-mak­ing will re­main a right of cit­i­zens.

Bas­deo Pan­day and Patrick Man­ning said a cou­ple years ago that you were not ready for the job. How do you re­spond to that now?

I think suf­fi­cient time has now passed for many to un­der­stand how I ap­proach crit­i­cism. At no time do I ig­nore any­thing any­one says, es­pe­cial­ly for­mer lead­ers who had their own style and their own ways of lead­ing.But what I do not do is al­low my­self to be­come em­broiled in pub­lic fights with any­one over their opin­ions. Fight­ing on opin­ions achieves lit­tle and, in fact, dis­tracts from the very im­por­tant job of care­ful­ly tak­ing our coun­try to a place where it is tru­ly a jew­el of the Amer­i­c­as.

There have been times when I was guid­ed by crit­i­cism, and there have been times when I de­cid­ed not to be dis­tract­ed by po­lit­i­cal taunts.And I be­lieve, what­ev­er has been said, the ev­i­dence now speaks for it­self. The peo­ple are pleased with my per­for­mance, and they are the ones who mat­ter most. Some peo­ple said we would come apart al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, but here we are af­ter four years–a strong gov­ern­ment and a strong coali­tion work­ing to­geth­er for the ben­e­fit of all the peo­ple.

Had I been eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed by any­one ex­press­ing their views on my lead­er­ship, we could not pos­si­bly have de­liv­ered 90 per cent of our man­i­festo promis­es. And I should al­so point out, had I adopt­ed the kind of lead­er­ship this coun­try has known in the past, our coali­tion Gov­ern­ment would not have with­stood four years. Yet, to­day, we are ex­treme­ly strong and on course to fin­ish­ing our first term suc­cess­ful­ly.

How do you in­tend to re­solve the is­sue of racism in the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly as it is rear­ing its ug­ly head as cam­paign­ing for the gen­er­al elec­tion has start­ed?

Racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion–on the ba­sis of some­one's eth­nic­i­ty, ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion or any­thing of the sort–have no place in the gov­er­nance and progress of a mod­ern so­ci­ety. I will not tol­er­ate it in any form and con­demn it wher­ev­er it is al­lowed.

Our coun­try suf­fered from eth­nic po­lar­i­sa­tion in the past, and one of the things I re­solved to do when I en­tered pol­i­tics was to make sure I worked for the peo­ple with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for race. Noth­ing can be built on di­vi­sion; every­one must be equal, and no one must ever feel in­fe­ri­or.

We would con­tin­ue to work for the peo­ple as we have been do­ing and de­nounce any­one or any group that tries to push that line on our peo­ple. We are a small coun­try and those who want to use race for po­lit­i­cal gain would find that the peo­ple would re­ject them. We see every­one as equal and there is NO PLACE in our par­ty and our part­ner­ship for any­one who dis­agrees with that.

Is there a per­son­al in­ter­est to de­vel­op Cen­tral and South and less on the East-West Cor­ri­dor, where the bal­ance of pow­er hangs?

Cer­tain­ly not. And if you analyse our de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, you would see that it takes in­to ac­count the needs of every part of the coun­try. How­ev­er, let me make it clear that rur­al Trinidad suf­fered from State ne­glect for decades and our Gov­ern­ment made a con­scious ef­fort to re­build the in­fra­struc­ture and pro­vide ameni­ties.

As an ex­am­ple, there was one com­mu­ni­ty in Ma­yaro where we de­liv­ered wa­ter for the first time in 100 years! One hun­dred years...and where some are see­ing de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place now and ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment's agen­da, they should first ask why it took so long for ba­sic ameni­ties to reach com­mu­ni­ties that are part of T&T.

How do you ex­plain to the pop­u­la­tion claims that the Gov­ern­ment is more in­ter­est­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of the UNC strong­hold ar­eas?

I am not con­vinced that is the view of the pop­u­la­tion. It's the mis­in­for­ma­tion that's com­ing from the Op­po­si­tion and our de­trac­tors. And such mis­in­for­ma­tion is when you have no vi­sion for lead­er­ship and in­tend to try to win based on pound­ing at every­thing and not build­ing any­thing.

We do not have a seat in Diego Mar­tin but we are ex­tend­ing the high­way there. When the area suf­fered the worst flood­ing in years, we were there im­me­di­ate­ly to help. We are build­ing a high­way to Point Fortin...but Point Fortin is hard­ly con­sid­ered a strong­hold of our par­ty.

Our de­vel­op­ment is fo­cused on T&T, and we are re­build­ing this coun­try com­mu­ni­ty by com­mu­ni­ty. The Op­po­si­tion will con­tin­ue to ob­ject, not on the ba­sis of hav­ing any kind of plan, but be­cause they need the sup­port that we have and they will do any­thing to cre­ate doubt in the minds of cit­i­zens.But when you are not on­ly talk­ing, but in­stead de­liv­er­ing to every sin­gle part of T&T, it is hard to doubt the ev­i­dence of de­liv­ery, even when they are in places that are held by the Op­po­si­tion.

When was the last time you had a re­al­ly re­lax­ing day...maybe a day at the beach or just shop­ping, no phones, no TV, no pa­pers, no me­dia, no min­is­ters?And many years ago, you said that you love pol­i­tics: is the feel­ing the same now?

I can­not say. But you know, serv­ing the peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly is ex­treme­ly mo­ti­vat­ing. It is some­thing that my hus­band Gre­go­ry sup­ports me on and he has al­ways been my chief sup­port­er and con­fi­dante. It is some­thing that my son, daugh­ter-in-law and grand­chil­dren sup­port me on, and they un­der­stand how de­mand­ing the job can be.

And when I meet peo­ple, hear their sto­ries, and learn that we are touch­ing their lives in a very di­rect way, it pro­vides a very deep in­spi­ra­tion–the kind that keeps you work­ing late in­to the night, and keeps you sat­is­fied on on­ly two or three hours sleep. That is what I have done all through my po­lit­i­cal life and that is what I in­tend to do for as long as I com­mand the sup­port of our cit­i­zens.I should al­so men­tion that my in­ten­tion is to en­sure that prime min­is­ters serve no more than two terms.

That means the mo­ment we suc­cess­ful­ly pass such leg­is­la­tion, we give cit­i­zens a greater right to choose their lead­ers, rather than any­one be­liev­ing him­self or her­self to be a leader for life.So based on cit­i­zens sup­port and the pas­sage of that leg­is­la­tion, I will con­tin­ue to di­rect­ly serve the peo­ple. And with my love for pol­i­tics and ser­vice, I can wait for the time when I can do the sim­ple things again.

Why have you al­lowed the COP to be sub­sumed un­der the PP? Wouldn't it have been bet­ter to al­low the COP as a part­ner­ship mem­ber to de­ter­mine its own progress?

I dis­agree with that state­ment. The Fyz­abad De­c­la­ra­tion es­tab­lished the guide­lines for our part­ner­ship and it still ap­plies. Each mem­ber of our part­ner­ship is equal but each mem­ber al­so op­er­ates in­de­pen­dent­ly. Our mis­sion in 2010–and our mis­sion to­day and for the fu­ture–re­mains the same: to serve the peo­ple.

We had dif­fer­ences be­cause each mem­ber of our coali­tion is a dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion. And as leader of the part­ner­ship and as leader of my par­ty, I have al­ways re­spect­ed the views of the group, and I cer­tain­ly have not in­ter­fered in their in­ter­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions and have no in­ten­tion in do­ing so.

Fail­ure to deal with pub­lic pro­cure­ment, al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and crime con­tin­ue to mar the progress of your Gov­ern­ment. How do you in­tend to treat with this dur­ing the com­ing year–the last of the PP 2010�2015 term?

Crime is a prob­lem that was al­lowed to grow unchecked for a num­ber of years un­der our pre­de­ces­sor ad­min­is­tra­tion, which pre­ferred to use state re­sources to en­ter­tain gang lead­ers. I would not say we have failed. Rather, I would say that we have made some progress, but ap­pre­ci­ate that peo­ple not on­ly want to see progress in num­bers, but al­so want to FEEL safe in their homes again.

We have made a sig­nif­i­cant dent in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and there has been a de­cline in crime since we took of­fice.And we have pro­vid­ed the pro­tec­tive ser­vices with the re­sources they need, such as:

1. Mod­ernised ve­hi­cles with GPS track­ing

2. A net­work­ing sys­tem for fin­ger­print­ing for more than 70 po­lice sta­tions, so that no one is al­lowed to slip through the cracks

3. Ful­ly com­put­erised po­lice sta­tions which al­so fa­cil­i­tate bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion with all po­lice posts and the cen­tral head­quar­ters

4. A ful­ly equipped Rapid Re­sponse Unit that func­tions on the ba­sis of GPS track­ing and con­tin­u­ous move­ment of po­lice ve­hi­cles

5. Greater re­sources to mu­nic­i­pal po­lice to func­tion bet­ter, re­spond quick­er and pro­vide greater pro­tec­tion to cit­i­zens

With re­spect to pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, we were de­layed ini­tial­ly by a lack of co-op­er­a­tion by the Op­po­si­tion. We put out the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion for pub­lic com­ment and have made ad­just­ments. The bill is be­fore the Par­lia­ment now and we ex­pect it will pass.We have a num­ber of leg­isla­tive mat­ters on our agen­da for the last year, in­clud­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, which is some­thing we promised in 2010.

Do you be­lieve that the re­moval of Jack Warn­er from the PP was a bad de­ci­sion?

No.