To say that Suzette Louwe has ruf­fled some feath­ers on the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal and so­cial land­scape might be an un­der­state­ment. The busi­ness­woman-turned-pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia ac­tivist is in no way shy about voic­ing her opin­ion, even if it means earn­ing the ire of some very im­por­tant politi­cians. She be­lieves that the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial struc­tures in T&T need a re­vamp­ing...and that she is ful­ly equipped for the job.

Louwe re­cent­ly shared with Sun­day Guardian an in­sight in­to the hum­ble child­hood, cher­ished dreams, con­cerns as a busi­ness­woman and moth­er, and stark re­al­i­sa­tion which birthed her so­cial me­dia fame.

“I didn't start off want­i­ng to be an ac­tivist to be hon­est. I had be­come so frus­trat­ed with the po­lit­i­cal du­op­oly that mas­quer­ad­ed as a democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go that I felt that I need­ed to voice my con­cerns pub­licly, with the hope that oth­ers would join in the con­ver­sa­tion and that that con­ver­sa­tion would be­come a na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion that couldn't be ig­nored by our politi­cians and lead­ers. I had no re­al as­pi­ra­tions past that, but along the jour­ney, oth­ers joined that voice and kin­da de­pend­ed on that voice to bring our con­cerns to the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion,” she ex­plained.

As the co-own­er of sev­er­al busi­ness­es she has shared with her hus­band, Ed­uard, for 20 years, Louwe said she was able to ob­serve how the econ­o­my im­pact­ed so­cial poli­cies re­gard­ing the un­der­priv­i­leged and dis­placed in so­ci­ety. She said she was deeply af­fect­ed while vis­it­ing less for­tu­nate fam­i­lies af­ter her hus­band be­came the Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Li­ons Club over ten years ago.

“My heart broke. I saw what I would con­sid­er to be a trav­es­ty on the peo­ple of T&T; how a fam­i­ly would have to make the de­ci­sion be­tween a child hav­ing food or go­ing to school. It's a choice a fam­i­ly should not have to make.”

The ex­pe­ri­ence kin­dled snap­shots of her child­hood in south Trinidad where Louwe said she grew up with a moth­er who was a house­wife, a truck dri­ver fa­ther and three oth­er sib­lings.

“At that point when I saw those fam­i­lies, I felt we could do bet­ter than that as a coun­try. We have the re­sources, the tal­ent, the hard­work­ing peo­ple in T&T.”

Louwe in­ten­si­fied her work with the club and oth­er char­i­ties, ap­proach­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies for as­sis­tance with farm­ing projects and oth­er needs for small com­mu­ni­ties like Carlsen Field. She said, with lit­tle re­sponse, she start­ed feel­ing the urge to speak out to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens.

By 2015, with a “widen­ing gap be­tween the mid­dle class and the work­ing class, and the work­ing class be­com­ing the poor” in “oil-rich and en­er­gy-rich” T&T, she said she de­cid­ed to use so­cial me­dia to get the at­ten­tion of those in au­thor­i­ty.

Since then, Louwe has con­front­ed the Gov­ern­ment on is­sues rang­ing from the sale of Petrotrin, a sup­posed WASA rate in­crease and fire­crack­er leg­is­la­tion to the Gov­ern­ment's COVID-19 re­sponse, in­clud­ing its strict re-en­try mea­sures and the ori­gin of the Brazil­ian COVID vari­ant, clash­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and most re­cent­ly with Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

With­out nam­ing Louwe, in 2019, Row­ley ripped in­to the claim of the WASA rate in­crease while on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form at an Ari­ma Town Hall, dis­miss­ing it as false. Just months ago, Deyals­ingh threat­ened Louwe and a fel­low ac­tivist with le­gal ac­tion af­ter she ref­er­enced a let­ter that was cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main about a med­ical sup­plies com­pa­ny ac­cess­ing COVID-19 vac­cines on be­half of the T&T Gov­ern­ment. Her re­sponse? She said she was ready to bat­tle since she was with­in her rights as was every oth­er cit­i­zen, to ques­tion the Gov­ern­ment on con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions they make on be­half of the peo­ple.

She did ad­mit to Sun­day Guardian that at times fil­ter­ing fake news pre­sent­ed a chal­lenge in her cam­paign to em­pow­er cit­i­zens, but that is­sues raised in main­stream me­dia were her main fo­cus. She main­tained that lead­ers were free to step down if they did not wish to be trans­par­ent.

Louwe has al­so tak­en the Op­po­si­tion to task, in­sist­ing that they have “en­abled” nu­mer­ous un­ten­able sit­u­a­tions to con­tin­ue be­cause of their si­lence.

As a change in­flu­encer, Louwe al­so ad­dress­es is­sues out­side the po­lit­i­cal do­main.

Louwe's ques­tions and ad­mo­ni­tions to those in po­si­tions of pow­er most­ly take the form of posts or video blogs on her per­son­al Face­book page where she has gath­ered over 45,000 fol­low­ers. She formed the “Cit­i­zens Watch Group” page in 2019 to give the pub­lic a cen­tralised lo­ca­tion to air their con­cerns and of­fer so­lu­tions while keep­ing com­ments re­spect­ful. She al­so at­tempt­ed to launch an ac­tion group, she said. Some of her sup­port­ers have even set up a page on Fb ti­tled, “Suzette Louwe for Prime Min­is­ter” which now has over 800 fol­low­ers.

Louwe be­lieves her ap­peal stems from many peo­ple's frus­tra­tion with cur­rent lead­ers and her brazen­ness in speak­ing out. She said she bears no po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance, adding that al­though her main fo­cus was on ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment when she first start­ed since they were in charge of man­ag­ing things, she holds both sides to equal ac­count.

As to whether she would con­sid­er run­ning for po­lit­i­cal of­fice, Louwe was ten­ta­tive at first, but then replied:

“Af­ter more than three years of speak­ing out and de­mand­ing bet­ter...the peo­ple are left with no choice but to de­fend our­selves as we see nei­ther of the two par­ties have my con­fi­dence that they can give this coun­try what this coun­try needs in terms of de­vel­op­ment and prop­er gov­er­nance.

“And so, if we are left with no choice, we have to come to­geth­er as a peo­ple so I in­tend to at­tract and form a team of lead­ers, skilled in their re­spec­tive dis­ci­plines per­haps to form the fu­ture gov­ern­ment of T&T. I do in­tend to run for of­fice at some point in time be­cause I be­lieve that I have a lot to of­fer my coun­try and if I do get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to help, I know I would be able to make a dif­fer­ence.”

Louwe's fire­brand ap­proach rep­re­sents just one as­pect of her per­son­al­i­ty, how­ev­er.

Suzette Louwe with husband, Eduard and twin daughters, Catherine and Charlotte.

Born at Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al in To­ba­go to a Ro­man Catholic moth­er who is a blend of His­pan­ic, African and Cau­casian, and an East In­di­an fa­ther who was Hin­du, Louwe's her­itage re­flects the melt­ing pot that is Trin­ba­go.

Re­call­ing her “close-knit” fam­i­ly who taught her to ap­pre­ci­ate all cul­tures and re­li­gions, she said as a child, she told her moth­er about her dreams of help­ing fam­i­lies who came from mod­est means like them. She said her faith in God saw her and her hus­band, who is Dutch, through one of the most try­ing times in their lives.

“I got preg­nant lat­er on in life be­cause we were deeply in­volved in the busi­ness­es we owned in Trinidad. Think­ing back now of course, if I had to do it all over I prob­a­bly would have had kids ear­li­er.”

Louwe had a high-risk preg­nan­cy, giv­ing birth to twin girls, Cather­ine and Char­lotte who weighed a mere 1.3 kg and 1.1 kg re­spec­tive­ly. Char­lotte had three holes in her heart and Cather­ine was di­ag­nosed with necro­tis­ing en­teri­col­i­tis at about three weeks old.

Necro­tis­ing en­te­ro­col­i­tis (NEC) is a dev­as­tat­ing dis­ease that af­fects most­ly the in­tes­tine of pre­ma­ture in­fants. The wall of the in­tes­tine is in­vad­ed by bac­te­ria, which cause lo­cal in­fec­tion and in­flam­ma­tion that can ul­ti­mate­ly de­stroy the wall of the bow­el (in­tes­tine).

“They were at the NICU (Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit) at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and I have to say it up to this day that Petronel­la Man­ning and that Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit, with­out a doubt, saved the life of those chil­dren. So we do have good ser­vice in health­care that needs to be high­light­ed as well.

“I re­mem­ber the pae­di­a­tri­cian say­ing they have a 40 per cent chance of sur­vival and I said to him: I un­der­stand that you are telling me this from a sci­en­tif­ic point of view, but the God that I be­lieve in will not bring these two chil­dren in­to this world and then take them away from me.”

Doc­tors rec­om­mend­ed op­er­at­ing on Char­lotte, but with the child weigh­ing less than three pounds, Louwe said she in­sist­ed they wait un­til she was old­er and stronger. She kept be­liev­ing that her ba­bies would make it. When Char­lotte was two, the holes com­plete­ly closed, Louwe said, her voice be­gin­ning to wa­ver.

She said Cather­ine, mean­while, was the on­ly one to sur­vive out of three ba­bies on the Ward bat­tling the necro­tis­ing en­teri­col­i­tis con­di­tion.

Louwe and Ed­uard took their in­fants home af­ter five weeks and she stayed at home for a year to nur­ture her ba­bies, shield­ing them from the out­side world be­cause their im­mune sys­tems were still de­vel­op­ing.

To­day, her sev­en-year-old girls are “balls of en­er­gy,” speak Eng­lish and Dutch flu­ent­ly and top their class at school.

“I tell peo­ple all the time that the strength in a moth­er lit­er­al­ly has to be com­ing from God. It's not some­thing you have un­til you tru­ly be­come a moth­er and your chil­dren need you.”

Held up at gun­point two years ago on a Sun­day, af­ter gun­men jumped their wall as she was tak­ing her daugh­ters in­side their home, Louwe said she de­cid­ed to leave T&T.

“I re­mem­ber just cov­er­ing my chil­dren with my body and hov­er­ing over them and clos­ing my eyes, brac­ing for the im­pact...just hold­ing them and wait­ing to be shot.”An avid an­i­mal lover, Louwe said that it was their gi­ant Labrador, Ma­son and her hus­band's de­fi­ance that put off the in­trud­ers.

“I said: I'm not liv­ing like this; my chil­dren fought for their lives and they do not de­serve this. We had no choice but to leave.”

Louwe holds a BA in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion and sev­er­al diplo­mas, some of which are in in­clu­sive­ness and di­ver­si­ty man­age­ment, pub­lic re­la­tions and sus­tain­able en­er­gy man­age­ment. She has over 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in op­er­a­tions and peo­ple man­age­ment, in­clud­ing sup­ply chain man­age­ment. Cur­rent­ly the EU Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er for a re­new­able en­er­gy MNC in Am­s­ter­dam, she is pur­su­ing a Dou­ble Mas­ters in Busi­ness Man­age­ment and Glob­al Lead­er­ship and Tal­ent Man­age­ment.

Still, she said, T&T would al­ways be home.

“I can bare­ly look at pic­tures of T&T for Christ­mas and East­er and Moth­er's Day with­out lit­er­al­ly break­ing down. When I left my coun­try I knew it would be hard, but I nev­er imag­ined I would feel like I up­root­ed my soul. T&T will al­ways re­main my home and I don't care that peo­ple say that I'm abroad and I should not be fo­cus­ing on T&T. That is my coun­try, my land.”

Q&A with Suzette Louwe

You have amassed over 45,000 fol­low­ers on Fb. You main­tain an ac­tive pres­ence on­line with many com­ment­ing on each of your posts. Why do you think you ap­peal to so many?

I think a lot of peo­ple feel the same sense of frus­tra­tion that I feel which is why they can re­late to my Face­book page or the opin­ions that I put out. I am straight­for­ward and de­ter­mined. I sim­ply want a bet­ter coun­try and I hurt every day think­ing about hav­ing to leave my own coun­try for a bet­ter, safer life for my chil­dren. We should be able to have that good life and that safe­ty in our own coun­try and I feel em­pa­thy for those who don't have that choice to leave. I firm­ly be­lieve that we can be a bet­ter coun­try if we had bet­ter lead­ers. So I think my ap­peal is that I am not afraid to stand up and call out our lead­ers.

In terms of their treat­ment of COVID, what do you think the Gov­ern­ment can do bet­ter?

With re­gards to COVID, the Gov­ern­ment, I think, dropped the ball. To be­gin with, our bor­ders should have been closed at an ear­ly point in time when we re­alised there was mass mi­gra­tion we could not eco­nom­i­cal­ly man­age. I be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment did not pay at­ten­tion to the im­pend­ing cri­sis. Sec­ond­ly, the Gov­ern­ment should have been more proac­tive in procur­ing vac­cines ahead of their pro­duc­tion time. Leav­ing the bor­ders porous con­tributed to hav­ing the Brazil­ian strain en­ter there­by af­fect­ing the crit­i­cal in­fec­tion rate we cur­rent­ly have.

You've been very vo­cal on the Gov­ern­ment's strict re-en­try mea­sures, what do you think they can do to im­prove these?

I be­lieve that if it were me and I were sit­ting in gov­ern­ment, I would not leave my peo­ple be­hind. They are cit­i­zens of T&T, they have every right to be in their coun­try whether or not they were com­ing in dur­ing the cri­sis pe­ri­od. There were mea­sures in place where they could have been test­ed, ac­com­mo­dat­ed and re­turned to their homes.

I will not ac­cept that we left thou­sands of our own peo­ple strand­ed abroad, al­most be­com­ing home­less with no means of sup­port, re­quir­ing what is the equiv­a­lent of a visa to en­ter their coun­try. No cit­i­zen of T&T should be locked out of their coun­try un­der any cir­cum­stances.

What would you say to those who would ar­gue that the mea­sures were meant to pro­tect the larg­er pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion?

I un­der­stand that, but I don't see peo­ple as col­lat­er­al dam­age in any cir­cum­stance. What I would have said is in the in­ter­im, if you can come up with your PCR test, it is neg­a­tive, and you are able to fly out at this par­tic­u­lar time, we have repa­tri­a­tion flights avail­able, board your flight and come home. Once that had hap­pened and we had a small­er num­ber of peo­ple abroad who may have been COVID pos­i­tive and were able to quar­an­tine (abroad), af­ter that pe­ri­od, we have gone through the same process again.

Is there any­thing you think this cur­rent Gov­ern­ment is do­ing well?

I think the PNM is pop­u­lat­ed by very well-ed­u­cat­ed, well-ex­posed mem­bers in their ex­ec­u­tive. You can tell that they are up­stand­ing mem­bers. It's not that they can­not do bet­ter, they can. My ques­tion is why are they not do­ing bet­ter. One of the things I al­ways say about the PNM is that they do keep that lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ca­ma­raderie be­tween them and I think that's one of the things that gives them that strength.

Any ku­dos for the UNC?

They did some very good work when they were in gov­ern­ment. The cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions were nev­er ad­dressed and that is the rea­son they lost the elec­tions in the first place. You have many peo­ple in the UNC who are will­ing to make the dif­fer­ence, but again, lead­er­ship is set­ting the pace and if you don't have lead­er­ship that has the po­lit­i­cal will, there's very lit­tle the best can­di­dates can do in any par­ty.

If you were to be elect­ed PM, what would be your first act or area of fo­cus?

My very first area of fo­cus would be strength­en­ing the small to medi­um busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. I would want to see that the SMEs are de­vel­oped so that once that hap­pens we are look­ing at job cre­ation, kick­start­ing the econ­o­my, cre­at­ing our ex­ports, im­proved in­fra­struc­ture in the com­mu­ni­ties, fam­i­lies be­ing able to cre­ate their small busi­ness­es and be­come fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble. Any econ­o­mist will tell you that the eco­nom­ic back­bone of a coun­try is its mid­dle class.

What do you say to your de­trac­tors/peo­ple who want to si­lence you?

Peo­ple sup­port their par­ty. I get that and peo­ple are very loy­al to their par­ty, but at some point in time we have to de­cide whether this trumps our own well-be­ing and if we know that the peo­ple that we are sup­port­ing are the on­ly ones ben­e­fit­ting, I think we have to take a look at our pri­or­i­ties. I am vi­cious­ly at­tacked dai­ly as a woman by women on both sides of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum and I want to say to them that my fight is not with you. My fight is with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, whomev­er that is. I want to say that you can at­tack me, de­grade me all you like, I will nev­er re­turn that to you.