Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

One year has passed since Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last faced jour­nal­ists at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

It is gap that has now prompt­ed the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) to of­fi­cial­ly seek talks with the Prime Min­is­ter on the is­sue of “for­mal press avail­abil­i­ty.”

With the ex­cep­tion of a brief ques­tion-and-an­swer ses­sion fol­low­ing the na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not held a me­dia con­fer­ence since her last post-Cab­i­net ap­pear­ance on June 5, 2025.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment held its first Cab­i­net meet­ing on May 8, 2025, fol­lowed by a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing led by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The event proved mem­o­rable, mark­ing what many viewed as the emer­gence of a more com­bat­ive Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­pared to her 2010–2015 tenure.

Dur­ing the brief­ing, she sig­nalled a tougher ap­proach to me­dia re­la­tions, de­clar­ing that she would not tol­er­ate what she de­scribed as dou­ble stan­dards in jour­nal­is­tic scruti­ny and warn­ing re­porters: “I was too nice last time.”

A week lat­er came an­oth­er defin­ing mo­ment. This time, Per­sad-Bisses­sar stood along­side the ex­ec­u­tive of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion and dra­mat­i­cal­ly tore up the con­tro­ver­sial Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty trans­for­ma­tion plan, de­liv­er­ing on a cam­paign promise to scrap the pro­pos­al.

There were oth­er mem­o­rable mo­ments where the Prime Min­is­ter was in at­ten­dance.

On May 29, 2025, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der asked that the lights in the me­dia brief­ing room be turned off so he could the­atri­cal­ly de­scribe the hor­rors of a home in­va­sion, as Gov­ern­ment pledged to de­liv­er on an­oth­er cam­paign promise, which was the “stand-your-ground” leg­is­la­tion.

These ear­ly post-Cab­i­net brief­in­gs cap­ti­vat­ed the na­tion, and views from TTT’s YouTube page alone reached as high as 85,000. So­cial me­dia was al­so flood­ed with clips from these ini­tial press brief­in­gs with the Prime Min­is­ter.

But af­ter June 5, 2025, the Prime Min­is­ter stopped at­tend­ing post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­in­gs al­to­geth­er.

There­after, when­ev­er the Cab­i­net opt­ed to hold a brief­ing, usu­al­ly an­nounced late on a Thurs­day af­ter­noon, though not con­sis­tent­ly, it was left to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s min­is­ters to take cen­tre stage and an­swer ques­tions from the me­dia.

There has been crit­i­cism of this move, as in the last year, there have been sev­er­al is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance, rang­ing from geopo­lit­i­cal ag­gres­sion in the re­gion, the pres­ence of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel and as­sets in the coun­try, an al­liance formed with the US and oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries to com­bat nar­co-ter­ror­ism, the need for suc­ces­sive states of emer­gency and en­er­gy-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Her min­is­ters at the post-Cab­i­net brief­in­gs of­ten de­clined to ad­dress is­sues out­side of their re­mit, say­ing the PM has or­dered them to “stay in their lane.”

Na­tion­al en­gage­ment has seem­ing­ly dropped off as well, with the last post-Cab­i­net brief­ing with the Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, on­ly amass­ing un­der 8,000 views.

MATT has tak­en note of the PM’s ab­sence.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, MATT said, “While we ac­knowl­edge that the Prime Min­is­ter has made her­self avail­able to the me­dia in oth­er ca­pac­i­ties, such as speak­ing out­side of Par­lia­ment be­fore a sit­ting and briefly at cer­tain func­tions, we firm­ly be­lieve that this does not re­place the fo­rum of a for­mal press brief­ing.

“Hav­ing the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond to un­script­ed ques­tions at a for­mal press con­fer­ence is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial to the trans­par­ent func­tion­ing of our democ­ra­cy.”

MATT, led by pres­i­dent Pri­or Be­har­ry, re­vealed that it has writ­ten to the PM re­quest­ing a meet­ing.

“Our in­ten­tion is to dis­cuss this lack of for­mal press avail­abil­i­ty, along­side oth­er grow­ing con­cerns. Among these is the trou­bling trend where the me­dia, in sev­er­al in­stances, have not been in­vit­ed to cov­er func­tions and events host­ed by gov­ern­ment min­istries that are util­is­ing state re­sources,” the as­so­ci­a­tion said.

“By ask­ing ques­tions and hold­ing all bod­ies and in­di­vid­u­als in so­ci­ety to ac­count, we are ful­fill­ing our con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty. It is our man­date to ques­tion every­one in so­ci­ety on be­half of the pub­lic.”

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter on this mat­ter. We told her that while we ac­knowl­edge she is at times avail­able via What­sApp, there are re­stric­tions with that mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it per­tains to fol­low-up ques­tions. Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter if there was a rea­son she had not at­tend­ed a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing since June 5 last year.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed, “Re­al­ly! My Min­is­ters are ful­ly com­pe­tent to an­swer all ques­tions. Guess that’s your news. At a time when T&T is in world news.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to T&T’s elec­tion to a non-per­ma­nent seat on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­ten­sive­ly on.

Row­ley: It was my du­ty

Draw­ing com­par­isons with his own tenure, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley not­ed that he rou­tine­ly held post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­in­gs and of­ten faced ques­tions from jour­nal­ists im­me­di­ate­ly up­on re­turn­ing from over­seas trips.

“As prime min­is­ter, I was ac­count­able to the pop­u­la­tion for what­ev­er that min­is­ter, that min­istry or that agency has done,” Row­ley said.

“The ques­tion­ing of the prime min­is­ter is a valu­able tool to let the pop­u­la­tion be aware of what the gov­ern­ment is do­ing.

“Very of­ten, on the re­turn from a trip abroad where I have dealt with na­tion­al is­sues, I had the press con­fer­ence at Pi­ar­co Air­port.

“Even ques­tions about is­sues that oc­curred while I was ab­sent from the coun­try, I could have been ques­tioned on those is­sues.”

He was par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy, ac­cus­ing her of re­ly­ing on state­ments and so­cial me­dia posts in­stead of sub­mit­ting her­self to di­rect ques­tion­ing by jour­nal­ists.

“What is hap­pen­ing now is a con­tentious ac­tion on the part of the Prime Min­is­ter, who takes the po­si­tion, one, I don’t have to go to work. Two, I com­mu­ni­cate with you by Face­book re­lease and non­sense,” Row­ley said.

“That is gov­ern­ment by con­tempt. If you don’t want to be held ac­count­able, you stay away from those who hold you ac­count­able.”

Row­ley fur­ther claimed that the Gov­ern­ment was fail­ing to ad­dress mount­ing na­tion­al chal­lenges and warned that pub­lic con­fi­dence in gov­er­nance was be­ing erod­ed.

“The loss of con­fi­dence in gov­er­nance of the coun­try will it­self be a con­trib­u­tor to the pres­sures that peo­ple are un­der be­cause there will be no hope that things are go­ing to get bet­ter,” he said.

Anal­hyst: Key as­pect of gov­er­nance

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said ef­fec­tive po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a ma­jor as­pect of gov­er­nance.

“And while I don’t see it nec­es­sary for the Prime Min­is­ter to do like Dr Row­ley and be there for two hours and talk­ing and talk­ing, I don’t see any­thing wrong if the Prime Min­is­ter comes once a month to post-Cab, maybe de­pend­ing on the ur­gen­cies of the mat­ters to dis­cuss and the na­tion­al is­sues to be dis­cussed. It can be as a sum­ma­ry of mat­ters per month, or it could be as a sum­ma­ry of mat­ters per quar­ter, as the case may be.”

Mo­hammed said he be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar has a cap­ti­vat­ing and charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty that will calm and re­as­sure the na­tion.

“She has the abil­i­ty to defuse ten­sions by what she says, her pres­ence, her ap­proach, and I think it will strength­en what cur­rent­ly ex­ists.”