Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

Jesse Ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­liv­ered a blunt and un­com­pro­mis­ing warn­ing to mem­bers of her own par­lia­men­tary team.

“I will buss your head,” she said at last night’s Mon­day Night Re­port in Cou­va, as she ac­cused some of her own MPs of “ca­vort­ing” with mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), cor­rupt con­trac­tors and some she de­scribed as “fake elites.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar cau­tioned that any MP caught en­gag­ing in ques­tion­able al­liances would face pub­lic ex­po­sure, dis­missal and pos­si­ble le­gal con­se­quences.

“I’m warn­ing per­sons, you know who you are,” she de­clared.

“You have al­ready for­got­ten the UNC peo­ple who put you in of­fice. I warn you, and I am not afraid, I will fire you. I will en­sure you face the courts. We can­not re­place a cor­rupt bunch with an­oth­er cor­rupt bunch.”

The Prime Min­is­ter stressed that her Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty was to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety, not to re­ward “po­lit­i­cal in­sid­ers.”

“The UNC worked too hard for some peo­ple to be favour­ing cor­rupt fake elites,” she said, ref­er­enc­ing MPs who she claimed were “lim­ing in Hy­att” with the very peo­ple her par­ty had vowed to hold ac­count­able for cor­rupt prac­tices.

“They will car­ry you and not bring you back,” she warned.

In a strik­ing­ly force­ful mo­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told MPs to “straight­en up and fix your­self,” adding, “Con­sid­er this as a warn­ing. This Kam­la is not the same. Some of the things you did and get away with will not be re­peat­ed.”

Her com­ments ap­pear aimed at re­in­forc­ing par­ty dis­ci­pline as the UNC marked its first 100 days back in of­fice and in­ten­si­fies its an­ti-cor­rup­tion agen­da.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks al­so served as a sig­nal to sup­port­ers that her ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to guard against in­ter­nal mis­con­duct as vig­or­ous­ly as it pur­sues al­leged wrong­do­ing by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment.

“Pub­lic trust is not some­thing we can af­ford to squan­der,” she told the gath­er­ing.

“If you con­tin­ue, I will pub­licly call you out.”

She al­so de­clared that her Gov­ern­ment had al­ready be­gun “turn­ing the tide” against crime in T&T, cit­ing a 34 per cent drop in the mur­der rate and a tar­get­ed State of Emer­gency aimed at dis­man­tling crim­i­nal net­works.

She said each of her min­is­ters has been man­dat­ed to de­liv­er re­sults and will be held ac­count­able di­rect­ly to the pub­lic.

“No one is go­ing to be al­lowed to hide be­hind me if they don’t per­form,” she said.

“Every man and woman will have to face you and ac­count. Do your jobs.” De­fend­ing the on­go­ing SoE, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was “de­signed to hunt down crim­i­nals un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.”

“You hear crit­i­cisms about tram­pling rights … but what about your rights?” she asked the au­di­ence.

“The rights of the ma­jor­i­ty out­bal­ance the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

She re­port­ed that 38 pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders had been is­sued to stop vi­o­lent crimes be­fore they reached the streets, in­sist­ing that these mea­sures had con­tributed to the sharp de­cline in mur­ders.

“Are you safer to­day? That an­swer has to be yes,” she told the crowd.