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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Kamla in good health, not moving as UNC head

by

Peter Christopher
1795 days ago
20200826
President Paula-Mae Weekes presents Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar with her letter of appointment during a ceremony at President’s House, St Ann’s, yesterday.

President Paula-Mae Weekes presents Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar with her letter of appointment during a ceremony at President’s House, St Ann’s, yesterday.

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

I am in good health.

This was the as­sur­ance of the fresh­ly re-ap­point­ed leader of the Op­po­si­tion Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day.

Ques­tions had swirled about the sta­tus of the Siparia MP af­ter for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Tim Gopeesingh con­firmed he test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed the spec­u­la­tion that grew af­ter she had failed to make a pub­lic ap­pear­ance fol­low­ing the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion af­ter re­ceiv­ing her in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s.

“Well, I’ve been where I should be, the health au­thor­i­ties ad­vised us to stay put and that’s what I did,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“Last week I did a video-graphed mes­sag­ing, which we sent out to all me­dia hous­es so I was out in my of­fice that day. But I’ve been ba­si­cal­ly at home, giv­en the scare with COVID, I thank God that in good health, I have shown no symp­toms what­so­ev­er.”

She said a pic­ture dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign which de­pict­ed Gopeesingh along­side her had been tak­en long be­fore he was con­firmed as pos­i­tive with the virus.

“I know peo­ple who’ve been ask­ing about a pho­to­graph with my­self and Dr Gopeesingh and that pho­to­graph was tak­en way down be­fore, it was some­time in Ju­ly, so it’s more than a month I would say that I was on the truck and he was near­by when we were cam­paign­ing,” she said.

“So to the best of my knowl­edge, I have no con­tact with any­one who has test­ed pos­i­tive, to the best of my knowl­edge and I have not been named to the best of my knowl­edge as a con­tact of any per­son who has test­ed pos­i­tive, so thank God I’m in good health.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had since con­tact­ed Gopeesingh, whom she said was in good spir­its and was ex­pect­ed to be moved to a step-down fa­cil­i­ty soon.

The op­po­si­tion leader al­so down­played the calls made for her to step down, as she ex­plained while there had been dis­sent­ing voic­es, there had al­so been sup­port as well.

Grilled on calls for her to step down from in­side and out­side the par­ty hav­ing lost con­sec­u­tive gen­er­al elec­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I think my pres­ence here and the ac­cep­tance of the in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment speaks to the con­trary. In my words in the cer­e­mo­ny there, I in­di­cat­ed that I thought long and hard about it, and just as there are one or two who says I must go, there are oth­ers who are say­ing please stay, at this time you are need­ed, please stay. So I have looked at the pros and the cons and as I have said then, I re­peat, my work is not yet com­plete, there are thou­sands who vot­ed for the par­ty I lead and I in­tend to stand on their shoul­ders and be their voic­es in the Par­lia­ment and out­side of Par­lia­ment.”

She was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­mis­sive when asked about the crit­i­cism from two of her for­mer cab­i­net min­is­ters, De­vant Ma­haraj and Dr Fuad Khan.

“Well, you would no­tice they both did not get back a seat,” she said.

The UNC leader al­so con­firmed that in­ter­nal elec­tions for the par­ty were due lat­er this year but said she had not yet de­cid­ed if she would be con­test­ing the post.

She al­so an­nounced that David Lee had been cho­sen to be the Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip in Par­lia­ment, while the par­ty would still be dis­cussing the make­up of the Op­po­si­tion bench in the Sen­ate.


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