KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

While one po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst be­lieves Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cisms of the COVID-19 vac­cine are ir­rel­e­vant, an­oth­er an­a­lyst says her com­ments may have been based on pub­lic feed­back.

On Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­cour­aged her sup­port­ers to sue their em­ploy­ers if they ex­pe­ri­enced health is­sues af­ter be­ing forced to take the COVID-19 vac­cine.

The Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar over her at­tacks on its man­age­ment of the pan­dem­ic, but she dou­bled down on her claims of “fake” COVID-19 vac­cines dur­ing the par­ty’s lat­est meet­ing.

Re­spond­ing to this, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said these claims may have some truth to them. She said it was pos­si­ble Per­sad-Bisses­sar may have re­ceived com­plaints from her con­stituents.

As for those af­fect­ed, Dr Ram­per­sad said they had the right to take le­gal ac­tion but ad­mit­ted there may be some chal­lenges in do­ing so.

Dr Ram­per­sad said, “I think Per­sad-Bisses­sar may have al­so been re­ceiv­ing some kind of com­plaints from her con­stituents. There are these de­bates go­ing around. “They are go­ing around glob­al­ly about these peo­ple who died from COVID and specif­i­cal­ly who died from the vac­cine, but the lo­gis­tics of do­ing it though may be dif­fi­cult, since they’re long buried or burnt as the case may be. I know per­sons who still have ef­fects, and they are claim­ing it’s from the vac­cine. How­ev­er, to prove that is from the vac­cine might be dif­fi­cult. Whether this is go­ing to sway an elec­torate is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion.”

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed is call­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­ti-vac­cine claims “ir­rel­e­vant and dat­ed.” He told Guardian Me­dia this is not what the pop­u­la­tion cared to hear about from those in au­thor­i­ty.

Mo­hammed said, “It is dat­ed. It is not rel­e­vant. It is not a rel­e­vant or a per­ti­nent is­sue that touch­es and con­cerns the lives of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans go­ing for­ward. We ac­knowl­edge that there was a pan­dem­ic. Yes, there were ex­per­i­men­tal drugs that were ap­proved for emer­gency use, and there’s ac­knowl­edge­ment by all com­pa­nies that pro­duced the drugs that there would have been cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties that per­sons would have ex­pe­ri­enced as a re­sult of the drug.

“I’m not too sure about peo­ple be­ing forced to be vac­ci­nat­ed. I think at the end of the day, the choice to be vac­ci­nat­ed was al­ways theirs. I think at this stage of the dis­cus­sion, there has to be a con­ver­sa­tion that is ad­vanc­ing the con­ver­sa­tion be­yond its cur­rent sta­tus quo, be­yond the cur­rent so­cio-eco­nom­ic stand­ing. Plans and pro­pos­als that are go­ing to im­prove the lives of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans from the very bot­tom of the so­cial stra­ta all the way across and that is the kind of the dis­cus­sions that Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans want to hear from the leader of the Op­po­si­tion.”

On the con­ver­sa­tions that should be un­der­tak­en at this point in time, he said, “They want to know that there are plans in place to re­ju­ve­nate the econ­o­my, to dri­ve di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, to be able to im­prove health­care, to im­prove pub­lic ser­vices, to im­prove the cost of liv­ing, to add val­ue to their salaries that then trick­le down in­to in­creased pur­chas­ing pow­er in the su­per­mar­kets and in the phar­ma­cies and in the mar­kets. We call that the bread-and-but­ter is­sues that con­cern the peo­ple.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath on the is­sue. While he did not re­spond to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims, he said any­thing was ex­pect­ed from politi­cians dur­ing this time.

He said, “We are head­ing in­to an elec­tion, and I ex­pect any and every­thing com­ing from the politi­cians in or­der to try to wipe up sup­port from amongst the pop­u­la­tion.”