Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, Mikela Pan­day, has is­sued a stark warn­ing re­gard­ing what she de­scribes as an "es­ca­lat­ing pat­tern of at­tacks on the in­sti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to up­hold our democ­ra­cy," in­clud­ing the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, the Pres­i­dent, and the Ju­di­cia­ry.

In a state­ment re­leased to­day, Pan­day ex­pressed deep con­cern over this trend, which she links with the "wide­spread dis­missal of thou­sands of work­ers with­out re­gard for their liveli­hoods," paint­ing a pic­ture of heavy-hand­ed gov­er­nance.

Pan­day as­sert­ed that if in­sti­tu­tion­al bi­as­es or con­sti­tu­tion­al short­com­ings ex­ist, the ap­pro­pri­ate so­lu­tion lies in com­pre­hen­sive Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form.

She high­light­ed a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty, not­ing that the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment (2010-2015), de­spite hold­ing a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, "failed to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion­al change."

She ve­he­ment­ly pushed back against at­tempts to si­lence crit­i­cism by la­belling dis­senters as sup­port­ers of the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), call­ing it a "cheap and lazy po­lit­i­cal tac­tic, meant to si­lence le­git­i­mate con­cerns."

Equal­ly trou­bling, ac­cord­ing to Pan­day, is the "con­tin­ued use of so­cial me­dia by cer­tain min­is­ters to bul­ly, in­tim­i­date," a prac­tice she termed "cy­ber­bul­ly­ing that mir­rors con­duct be­fore the elec­tion and has con­tin­ued since."

She lament­ed that this be­hav­iour "nor­malis­es cy­ber­bul­ly­ing from the high­est lev­els of of­fice and sends a dan­ger­ous mes­sage that abuse is pow­er," adding that "si­lence in the face of on­line abuse is com­plic­i­ty" as it has not been con­demned by lead­er­ship.

Pan­day ar­gued that any lead­er­ship style thriv­ing on "di­vi­sion, in­tim­i­da­tion, and ha­tred can­not unite a di­vid­ed coun­try; it on­ly deep­ens the frac­tures," point­ing to the "tox­ic dis­course on­line" as ev­i­dence of the dam­age.

With a new leader now at the helm of the Op­po­si­tion, Pan­day urged both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties to "put coun­try be­fore pol­i­tics and work to­geth­er to achieve re­al re­form that strength­ens, not weak­ens, our democ­ra­cy."

She con­clud­ed by em­pha­sis­ing the crit­i­cal need for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form for the na­tion’s fu­ture, ad­vo­cat­ing for a sys­tem that tru­ly re­flects the will of the peo­ple and pro­tects the rights of all.

"Let us put coun­try be­fore par­ty and build a stronger, fair­er democ­ra­cy, one that our chil­dren can be proud of," she urged.