Renu­ka Singh

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is tak­ing heat for writ­ing to In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di re­quest­ing vac­cines to help T&T be­cause it is “reel­ing” from COVID-19.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader yes­ter­day did not re­spond to calls or texts on whether she be­lieved she over­stepped the bound­aries of her of­fice but took to so­cial me­dia to de­fend her ac­tions. In her post, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there is “no clear date as to when T&T will be re­ceiv­ing an ad­e­quate sup­ply of vac­cines.”

“I re­gard this is­sue as crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant to the well-be­ing of our coun­try,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said thou­sands of cit­i­zens were los­ing jobs “due to the eco­nom­ic lock­downs,” while “thou­sands more were strand­ed abroad and barred from re­turn­ing home.”

“I took this de­ci­sion in the in­ter­est of all cit­i­zens of our na­tion,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“When the lives and liveli­hoods of cit­i­zens are at stake I will al­ways act ur­gent­ly in their in­ter­est, es­pe­cial­ly as the Gov­ern­ment, in this case, has clear­ly failed to do.”

But For­eign CARI­COM Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day chid­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the move.

In a me­dia state­ment, Browne said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had cho­sen to “in­sert her­self” in gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment is­sues. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s let­ter came af­ter it was pub­lic knowl­edge that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had al­ready writ­ten to Mo­di re­quest­ing vac­cines.

“The leader of the Op­po­si­tion has cho­sen to sac­ri­fice pro­to­col and good judge­ment and to tam­per with sound bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions in a quest for rel­e­vance and at­ten­tion,” Browne said.

“The de­ci­sion by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to try to in­sert her­self in­to the mat­ter of on­go­ing gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion must be seen for what it is, an at­tempt to po­si­tion her­self to claim in ret­ro­spect that her let­ter was the one that achieved any par­tic­u­lar out­come.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on the mat­ter but he did not re­spond up to press time.