Fran­cis Joseph

The num­ber plates with the coat of arms on the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial car have been re­moved by the new Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The coat of arms plate re­placed PM1 when Patrick Man­ning was Prime Min­is­ter, even draw­ing ire from the then Op­po­si­tion par­ty, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). But Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised to re­move the coat of arms from the of­fi­cial ve­hi­cle when she be­came Prime Min­is­ter. Dur­ing a re­cep­tion at the Crowne Plaza ho­tel on Wednes­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed that the coat of arms was re­moved from the plate.

She told guests that when the ve­hi­cle ar­rived for her to at­tend her swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny at Knowsley on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, she looked at the num­ber plate. She said: "I re­alise it was PCL some­thing, so I said okay, let's go. Af­ter the swear­ing in, be­fore I got in­to the car, I looked at the num­ber plates again, and I re­alise it was PM 1. The coat of arms plates were re­moved. Thanks to Mr Aaron Hen­ry (head of SWAT se­cu­ri­ty), the plates were changed very quick­ly." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the coat of arms should on­ly be used by the head of state (the Pres­i­dent) and not the head of gov­ern­ment. At the end of the re­cep­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar stood in front of PM 1, ad­mir­ing the num­ber plates.

The re­cep­tion was held in the ball­room of the ho­tel. There was an­oth­er re­cep­tion host­ed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at Knowsley af­ter the swear­ing in. At Crowne Plaza, 150 guests were in­vit­ed, but at one time, there were 350 peo­ple packed like sar­dines in the ball­room. Many peo­ple who at­tend­ed the swear­ing in at Knowsley, and who did not re­ceive in­vi­ta­tions to the re­cep­tion, still turned up and "stormed" the func­tion. Chairs and ta­bles were over-oc­cu­pied as every­one want­ed to cel­e­brate the el­e­va­tion of Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the coun­try's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter.

Al­so in at­ten­dance was Anand Ram­lo­gan, who at age 37 be­came At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of T&T. Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that her Cab­i­net would be sworn in at 10 am to­day. But af­ter hear­ing a thought-pro­vok­ing speech from D'Abadie/O'Meara MP, Anil Roberts, she let the cat out the bag and an­nounced him as her new Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. Roberts went straight to the podi­um and thanked his Prime Min­is­ter. Maybe, for the first time, Roberts be­came speech­less. He said af­ter­wards: "I was to­tal­ly tak­en by sur­prise...I did not ex­pect this. "You see, I was even lost for words, noth­ing came out of my mouth, I was just speech­less," he added, as friends con­grat­u­lat­ed the man who whipped the for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Karen Nunez-Tesheira.