Yvonne Webb

Calls were be­ing made yes­ter­day for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to fire his En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre af­ter a video of her los­ing her cool with protest­ing con­stituents of La Brea went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia. How­ev­er, oth­ers have ap­plaud­ed her de­ci­sion to stand her ground.

By late evening, the video was viewed over 62,000 times.Olivierre last night de­fend­ed her ac­tion and the Prime Min­is­ter's right to chose his team.

"I did not lose my cool. I think you some­times need to speak to peo­ple in a lan­guage they would un­der­stand be­cause this protest ac­tion has been re­al­ly be­com­ing out of hand."

Dur­ing an in­ter­view mark­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion's an­niver­sary in of­fice, Row­ley said that he in­tend­ed to make ad­just­ments to his Cab­i­net.

Asked if this pub­lic out­burst could in­flu­ence the PM's de­ci­sion as he con­tem­plates his Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, Olivierre said: "What­ev­er his de­ci­sion, I would not even try to haz­ard a guess as to what he would or would not do. He is sure to chose his team as he sees fit."

It was on Tues­day, fol­low­ing a vis­it to oil-stained Cof­fee Beach, La Brea, in the con­stituen­cy she serves as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, that the con­fronta­tion be­tween her and protest­ing con­stituents, some with plac­ards out­side her of­fice, was record­ed on a cell­phone and post­ed on Face­book.

In a loud voice, Olivierre could be heard telling her con­stituents how un­rea­son­able they were be­ing ap­proach­ing her to seek com­pen­sa­tion on their be­half for loss of sales.

"This is nev­er done any­where else. This is mad­ness," she said.

One woman took is­sue with her tone, say­ing: "Min­is­ters don't talk to peo­ple like that."She was al­so crit­i­cised by some of the con­stituents in the video, a lot of which is in­audi­ble, for poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion, while oth­ers re­sort­ed to call­ing her names, like "wara­hoo and la­ga­hoo."

Olivierre stood her ground, say­ing she has stood up for them and made rep­re­sen­ta­tion to have this long-stand­ing prob­lem of hav­ing poor roads fixed.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Olivierre said the peo­ple who were mak­ing the case for com­pen­sa­tion were the same peo­ple who protest­ed for im­proved roads one year ago and the same peo­ple who stopped the mul­ti-mil­lion project on Mon­day be­cause re­duced traf­fic had re­sult­ed in a loss of their sales.

"While we em­pathise with the res­i­dents as the con­stituen­cy has been ne­glect­ed for so long and there is a high lev­el of un­em­ploy­ment in the area, this un­nec­es­sary dis­rup­tion to the Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts at re­solv­ing a long-stand­ing is­sue can­not be tol­er­at­ed," Olivierre said.

"That is in­cred­i­ble. You com­plain about the road be­ing in a de­plorable con­di­tion and now that it is be­ing re­paired, I can't com­pre­hend why you would even con­tem­plate seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of sales when we are do­ing the in­fra­struc­tur­al work to im­prove the con­di­tions un­der which you sell. And why de­lay the progress on the road any fur­ther?" she asked.

She drew the anal­o­gy: "it is like fix­ing your own home and want some­body else to com­pen­sate your for the in­con­ve­nience."

Asked if she had any plans to meet again with the res­i­dents, Olivierre said all of their oth­er is­sues had al­ready been ad­dressed.

"The re­main­ing is­sue was com­pen­sa­tion, which is not un­der con­sid­er­a­tion," she added.