An­ge­lo Je­didi­ah

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

One month in­to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gov­ern­ment’s term, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad and for­mer PNM fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira have praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her ‘no-non­sense’ lead­er­ship style in her sec­ond stint in of­fice.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Tues­day, Dr Ram­per­sad said there is a stark dif­fer­ence be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar now and dur­ing her 2010-2015 tenure.

“She’s laid her rules down, both for her par­ty and for the na­tion, in a way of what to ex­pect…She's very strong. Of course, she's old­er, but now she seems much stronger,” Dr Ram­per­sad said.

With the UNC’s elec­tion promise to re­vi­talise and di­ver­si­fy this coun­try’s econ­o­my and the gov­ern­ment’s pro­jec­tion of an $11 bil­lion deficit for this fis­cal year, Dr Ram­per­sad be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be firm and strate­gic in or­der to ad­dress T&T’s eco­nom­ic con­cerns.

“She's been try­ing to trim the fat…She's been iden­ti­fy­ing places where she thinks there's been ex­ces­sive spend­ing or wastage and she's very firm that she's go­ing to deal with that.”

In prais­ing T&T for hav­ing women in roles of na­tion­al lead­er­ship, for­mer PNM fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira praised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her abil­i­ty to lead this na­tion, af­ter years of in­ter­nal par­ty chal­lenges.

“You have to re­spect Kam­la [Per­sad-Bisses­sar], the prime min­is­ter. You have to. To come back as a woman, to come back af­ter there was that ca­bal around her and all the things that were said. I mean, you can't help but say she is re­silient,” Nunez-Tesheira said dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3.

Nunez-Tesheira al­so likened Per­sad-Bisses­sar to for­mer US pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt and his ‘big stick’ pol­i­cy, which she be­lieves the prime min­is­ter has adopt­ed in her sec­ond term.

“I think she re­al­ly has learned to let's see what hap­pens, be­cause it's too ear­ly, but she did say the right things, and I and she came across as sin­cere,” Nunez-Tesheira added.

“I think she's let­ting those men un­der­stand, you see how I’m pleas­ant and Aun­tie Ka­mala and all of that …There's an African say­ing, ‘walk soft­ly and car­ry a big stick...’ She's do­ing that. She's walk­ing soft­ly, but she's car­ry­ing that big stick.”