The ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers of T&T, in hail­ing the vic­to­ry Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Prime Min­is­ter elect, have pledged their sup­port to work­ing with her gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly re­gard­ing such plat­form is­sues as crime, cor­rup­tion and trans­paren­cy.

One such com­mit­ment came from the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce. The cham­ber, which is led by two women, pres­i­dent An­gel­la Per­sad and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Cather­ine Ku­mar, yes­ter­day is­sued a state­ment say­ing, "The cham­ber af­firs its com­mit­ment to work­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the new gov­ern­ment, as they now turn their at­ten­tion to­wards re­solv­ing the var­i­ous busi­ness chal­lenges of the day." The cham­ber, not­ing the "very keen and spir­it­ed cam­paigns" all the par­ties fought over the past five weeks, said, "The peo­ple have spo­ken and this clear­ly demon­strates that the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process and pow­er of the peo­ple are alive and well." The busi­ness body con­grat­u­lat­ed the elec­torate for its height­ened in­ter­est in Mon­day's elec­tion, which saw an in­crease in reg­is­tered vot­ers to more than a mil­lion. "The vot­er turnout, as re­port­ed by the me­dia, was al­so quite im­pres­sive at 70 per cent, much high­er than seen in re­cent elec­tions.

Like for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, dur­ing his con­ces­sion speech at Bal­isi­er House on Mon­day night, the cham­ber not­ed that youth vot­ers were more in­volved in this elec­tion than pre­vi­ous ones. The Em­ploy­ers' Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA), in its state­ment, said, "Recog­nis­ing that the pre-elec­tion pe­ri­od was hard-fought, with many is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance at the fore­front, we wish the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship a suc­cess­ful and pro­duc­tive term of of­fice." "It is our view that now is the time to prove that the peo­ple's choice was well placed and that promis­es will give way to pru­dent im­ple­men­ta­tion, for the ben­e­fit of all the cit­i­zens of T&T," the ECA stat­ed. The ECA said it would be will­ing to of­fer all its mem­ber­ship re­sources to as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.

The Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber not­ed the ma­tu­ri­ty of the elec­torate in its con­duct dur­ing the elec­tion. The south-based cham­ber, of­fered spe­cial con­grat­u­la­tions to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is a prod­uct of Pe­nal/Debe. "Now that the elec­tion is over, we look for­ward to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ur­gent mea­sures to ad­dress some of the is­sues of the man­i­festo of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship," its state­ment read. On top of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber's list of crit­i­cal is­sues is al­le­vi­at­ing the bur­den of crime.

Sec­ond item is that the com­bined is­sue of trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and moral­i­ty in pub­lic af­fairs, which the cham­ber said it wants to see ad­dressed "not by to­kenism, but by mean­ing­ful ac­tion." "One plank of the elec­tion of this gov­ern­ment has been that of cor­rup­tion, and one ap­pre­ci­ates that these mat­ters can­not be ad­dressed iin weeks, but Pe­nal/Debe wants these is­sues to be on the front burn­er of our gov­ern­ment's agen­da," the state­ment read.