Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

Joshua.Seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

When T&T re­turns to the polls, pre­sum­ably when con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in 2030, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be 78 years old, po­ten­tial­ly mak­ing her the coun­try’s old­est-ever serv­ing prime min­is­ter.

It would be an­oth­er his­toric feat for Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as she was al­ready the first fe­male leader of one of the coun­try’s ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties, as well as the coun­try’s first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter.

Next Tues­day, April 28, marks the first an­niver­sary of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s (UNC) re­turn to gov­ern­ment and Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sec­ond stint as prime min­is­ter.

Hav­ing turned 74 last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader since Jan­u­ary 2010, when she, to the sur­prise of many, at the time, re­placed for­mer PM Bas­deo Pan­day.

The PM and those clos­est to her con­tin­ue to in­sist that she’s in good health and of sound mind to con­tin­ue to lead for years to come.

That opin­ion is shared by two peo­ple who served as min­is­ters un­der Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, be­tween 2010 and 2105: for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan and for­mer min­is­ter of lo­cal gov­ern­ment Chan­dresh Shar­ma.

Both say that de­spite the Prime Min­is­ter’s age, there is no need to dis­cuss par­ty lead­er­ship suc­ces­sion any­time soon.

Khan: Suc­ces­sion not an is­sue

Khan, who was by Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s side when she sought par­ty lead­er­ship 16 years ago, said he sees no rea­son why the PM can­not serve for one or even two fur­ther terms.

“The thing about suc­ces­sor­ship with­in the UNC is that it is ba­si­cal­ly nev­er an is­sue. It wasn’t an is­sue un­der Pan­day. It’s not an is­sue un­der Kam­la.

“Lead­ers tend to be­lieve that they will be there for all time. I think it’s a re­al­is­tic view, be­cause the thing about it is, if you are there as the leader, you had to fight to be­come the leader, as Kam­la did in 2009. She had to fight like hell to do that, against all odds. Men, who are there now, call her all kinds of names. How­ev­er, why should she deal with suc­ces­sion when she still has her strength with her and she has her sens­es?” he said.

He said that while suc­ces­sion plan­ning should not be the PM’s con­cern, there are some sit­ting Cab­i­net mem­bers who could be­come good fu­ture par­ty lead­ers or even prime min­is­ters one day.

“I think Jer­lean John is very ac­tive, and peo­ple like her, right? And she has been with Kam­la for so long. I al­so think Sad­dam is do­ing a good job, and so is Bar­ry Padarath. And I even go so far as to say I like Mr (Roger) Alexan­der. I think he’s strong, a big fel­la. And he re­minds me of a strong per­son. But I like Jer­lean, and I like Sad­dam.

“But they are not on Kam­la’s lev­el. Po­lit­i­cal­ly, Kam­la is a sea­soned politi­cian. They are work­ers, if you un­der­stand. They are like Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj. He was a work­er. Yeah. He wasn’t po­lit­i­cal­ly strong like Bas­deo. In oth­er words, all of them are who we are talk­ing about there now, right? They are work­ing, good work­ers, but they are not po­lit­i­cal peo­ple like Kam­la. The on­ly per­son who is like Kam­la po­lit­i­cal­ly is Roodal... So, Roodal has a good chance as well,” he said.

Shar­ma: Age not an is­sue

For­mer Fyz­abad MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma agreed with Khan that Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mains not on­ly the present but al­so the fu­ture of the par­ty.

“I think the fu­ture of the UNC is Kam­la. She will con­tin­ue to do what she is do­ing, en­joy good health, and re­main fear­less as she is. She is com­mit­ted to Trinidad. She is mar­ried to Trinidad. No­body wants her to move. So the word ‘suc­ces­sion’ doesn’t arise cur­rent­ly. Al­though one would say Kam­la has a par­tic­u­lar age, age is no longer an is­sue.

“Look at the glob­al play­ers, glob­al­ly, every­where. The po­lit­i­cal gi­ants are re­al­ly the old­er, more ex­pe­ri­enced, more ma­ture, fear­less ones. Kam­la is emerg­ing in that same vein. ““

Ac­cord­ing to Shar­ma, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has led the most di­verse Cab­i­net in the coun­try’s his­to­ry while cap­tur­ing the hearts and minds of the pop­u­la­tion.

“Kam­la cer­tain­ly doesn’t look her age. She thinks. She flows.

“Kam­la no longer has to prove her­self. Luck­i­ly, she has done that. She no longer has to prove her­self. She could on­ly ac­com­plish more. The proof that Kam­la may think that she needs is to em­pow­er peo­ple, to make them bet­ter,” he said.

Bharath: I don’t see vi­sion,

I see di­vi­sion

An­oth­er for­mer PP min­is­ter, Vas­ant Bharath, lament­ed what he called a lack of lead­er­ship suc­ces­sion with­in the UNC.

Bharath, who pre­vi­ous­ly con­test­ed the UNC lead­er­ship po­si­tion, with­out suc­cess, be­lieved that the PM would seek to re­main par­ty leader as long as pos­si­ble.

“I don’t see there be­ing any per­spec­tive in the near term, or at all, of any suc­ces­sion tak­ing place in the UNC. It will hap­pen when the ul­ti­mate hap­pens, when Mrs Bisses­sar, you know, is no longer able to con­tin­ue, whether through death or sick­ness, and then there will be an almighty im­plo­sion with­in the UNC. Be­cause there are al­ready fac­tions fight­ing to be lead­ers who be­lieve that they can be lead­ers.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bharath, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­min­is­tra­tion in its first year in of­fice has not made mean­ing­ful in­roads in the ma­jor is­sues.

”What the Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly does not have is vi­sion. What they have is di­vi­sion. And that’s how our lead­er­ship works: by di­vid­ing and rul­ing, even amongst their own.

“There is a di­vi­sion by set­ting one against the oth­er. Be­cause once they set one against the oth­er, be­low the leader, they’re busy fight­ing amongst them­selves.

“We have launched an at­tack, not on pover­ty, but we’ve launched an at­tack on the poor. Be­cause you sent home 30,000 peo­ple who are, re­gard­less of what the is­sues are in CEPEP and URP and in forestry. You owe it to the peo­ple to im­prove the qual­i­ty of their lives over a pe­ri­od of time. When you send home 30,000 peo­ple, most of whom are com­plete­ly and to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on a pay­check every week or every fort­night with­out any ac­cess to any kind of wel­fare, what you’re do­ing is con­demn­ing those peo­ple to al­most a life of pover­ty and pos­si­bly crime. Be­cause a fa­ther or a moth­er is not go­ing to sit by and watch their chil­dren starve, right?” he asked.

An­a­lysts weigh in

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed agree that there is no need for the PM or the par­ty to es­tab­lish a suc­ces­sion plan one year in­to a five-year term.

Ram­per­sad said that pol­i­tics is not like oth­er in­sti­tu­tions, where one ap­plies for a lead­er­ship po­si­tion.

“The peo­ple de­cide. The peo­ple de­cide who is their leader. It’s not the par­ty to de­cide who is their leader. When Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley tried that, it fell flat on his face. His suc­ces­sion plan­ning was ba­si­cal­ly Stu­art Young with­in a few weeks.

“When he tried to de­cide that, it led to a crush­ing de­feat in the April 28, 2025, elec­tion. A po­lit­i­cal par­ty has to be de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. They would have a hi­er­ar­chy with­in the par­ty it­self. And they have peo­ple who vote in their in­ter­nal elec­tions for lead­ers.

“A suc­ces­sor is not ap­point­ed. Mr Pan­day al­ways said so­ci­ety will throw out its leader. Okay, so who would have thought that Kam­la Per­sad (Biss­esar) would have emerged the leader of the UNC? We saw a train of events. She built a his­to­ry. She built an ex­pe­ri­ence, decades of ex­pe­ri­ence. She came from the bot­tom and rose to the top,” Ram­per­sad said.

Ram­per­sad added there is no way to pre­dict who will even­tu­al­ly re­place Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader.

She said there are many peo­ple with­in the par­ty—some well-known, oth­ers not so much—who have the po­ten­tial.

For Mo­hammed, it is un­fair to bring up the is­sue of whether the PM can see out her term and pos­si­bly serve an ad­di­tion­al one.

“No­body posed that ques­tion to Dr Row­ley…There are mur­murs about whether or not she can make it for a term, once she has men­tal ca­pac­i­ty, which clear­ly she has demon­strat­ed she has, and once she has will and phys­i­cal strength, of course,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, dis­cus­sions about who will suc­ceed Per­sad-Bisses­sar are pre­ma­ture.

“The par­ty’s suc­ces­sion is not based on­ly on the lead­er­ship and who the leader is. The bot­tom line is that suc­ces­sion is al­so at­tached to suc­cess. The suc­ces­sor, who­ev­er the suc­ces­sor is, must be able to cap­ture not just the UNC base, but be­yond the UNC base. The cor­ri­dor, na­tion­al ap­peal, and the abil­i­ty to cap­ture and repo­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go. Let the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go - sup­port­ers, non-sup­port­ers of the UNC, sea­son­al sup­port­ers of the UNC- let them de­cide when that time comes. That’s not some­thing for now,” he said.