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Friday, July 11, 2025

Gov­ern­ment's leader in the Sen­ate...

Kamla picks Subhas Panday

by

20100613

Months af­ter she was ac­cused of boot­ing out the Pan­day clan from her team, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day ap­point­ed Sub­has Pan­day to lead Gov­ern­ment's busi­ness in the Sen­ate. She made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter a tour of her Siparia con­stituen­cy. While ad­dress­ing scores of sup­port­ers at the Pe­nal Quinam Gov­ern­ment School in Mendez, Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised Pan­day for show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the UNC through­out the pre-elec­tion pe­ri­od. "He is a loy­al sol­dier to our par­ty and to the peo­ple of T&T, and so we of­fer great thanks to him," the Prime Min­is­ter said. "I have an­nounced to the me­dia that Dr Roodal Mooni­lal will be the leader of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and to­day in our pres­ence I have asked Sub­has Pan­day to take the post of sen­a­tor and to al­so be the leader of Sen­ate busi­ness in the Re­pub­lic of T&T."

She al­so said she had in mind the names of peo­ple who would be ap­proached for the post of Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as well as Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate. She said, how­ev­er, that this would be an­nounced at a lat­er time. The Prime Min­is­ter al­so urged cit­i­zens to work with her to re­build T&T. Pan­day, who was present in Siparia, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar called him on Sat­ur­day and asked to meet with him.

"She made this of­fer and I con­sid­ered it and ac­cept­ed it with all hu­mil­i­ty," he said. "I feel so grat­i­fied that she has placed so much con­fi­dence in me...I feel ho­n­oured to be placed in this post and to have that sort of con­fi­dence be­ing re­posed in me, es­pe­cial­ly as leader of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness in the Sen­ate. "I promise her and I promise the coun­try that I will do my best...in any cir­cum­stances, I will do my best."

Asked whether he was sur­prised by the of­fer, Pan­day hes­i­tat­ed and then said: "The Prime MIn­is­ter had a good re­la­tion­ship with me from long time...I am more hap­py in this, than sur­prised." Asked what he in­tend­ed to do in his ca­pac­i­ty as Sen­ate head, Pan­day said: "The first thing to do is to fa­mil­iarise our­selves with all the sen­a­tors and set an agen­da for the cau­cus and we will dis­cuss seat­ing arrange­ments and so on." Beam­ing, he added: "It will be re­al­ly nice to be op­po­site my good friend Pen­ny Beck­les. She is my good friend...we went to law school to­geth­er and we will have a re­al­ly nice time in the Sen­ate. I am cer­tain all sen­a­tors will make con­tri­bu­tions and the Par­lia­ment will be a hec­tic Par­lia­ment." Pan­day said he was healthy, and could not say as yet if his new post would af­fect his pri­vate prac­tice as a lawyer.

Once Par­lia­ment is con­vened, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she planned to es­tab­lish leg­is­la­tion which would al­low for a Life Fund for ail­ing chil­dren. "Par­lia­ment will be open­ing from 1.30 pm (Fri­day), and soon af­ter that, the leg­is­la­tion will be brought in Par­lia­ment to give statu­to­ry ef­fect to our promise for the Life Fund. But in the mean­time, the lives of chil­dren who need surgery, we will as­sist you with it," she said. "We al­so promised that pen­sions will be in­creased to $3,000 and we will keep that as well, and we plan to look at pen­sion re­form as well." The Prime Min­is­ter urged cit­i­zens to work with her. "Take my hand and let us walk to­geth­er and work to­geth­er," she said. "We will put God in front and we will build our coun­try from the bot­tom–from vil­lage to vil­lage, com­mu­ni­ty by com­mu­ni­ty."

She al­so said T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cash flow prob­lem, but added there would be an ear­ly bud­get which would set the pri­or­i­ties of the new Gov­ern­ment. She said that all her promis­es, in­clud­ing a high­er pen­sion, would be up­held.


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