Mohit defends Kamla against PNM attack

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may have some age, she’s well re­spect­ed and she has done more for T&T than any Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP, says Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Van­dana Mo­hit.

Mo­hit de­fend­ed her boss in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, slam­ming re­torts by PNM MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly fol­low­ing the PM’s re­cent dis­parag­ing of PNM MPs.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in a post about in­ci­dents in school class time, said these should be ad­dressed with ex­pul­sion. Urg­ing youths to get se­ri­ous about life, the PM said, “When you waste your ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and fail your ex­ams, your fu­ture will be very dif­fi­cult be­cause your earn­ing po­ten­tial will be very lim­it­ed. The on­ly job op­tions avail­able for per­sons who don’t pass their ex­ams are low-pay­ing me­nial jobs or be­com­ing PNM MPs.”

St Ann’s East MP Gads­by-Dol­ly had shot back with a post, say­ing, “Kam­la, if you were not an old la­dy, I would tell you where to haul a body part which we all hold dear. But you are old and clear­ly in ear­ly-stage de­men­tia, so all I’ll say to your han­dlers is, come get yuh granny, please. To­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ful and shame­less.”

In Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, with the PM ab­sent due to her US as­sign­ment, Mo­hit cit­ed the is­sue dur­ing de­bate on a PNM mo­tion on a de­vel­op­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis in T&T.

Mo­hit said, “I will tell the MP (Gads­by-Dol­ly) to­day that the MP for Siparia (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) is a well-es­tab­lished woman of this coun­try, this Caribbean re­gion and glob­al­ly and the MP for Siparia is re­spect­ed by all of her MPs, by her con­stituents and we sup­port our Prime Min­is­ter, whether what be her age!

“And our Prime Min­is­ter will nev­er speak like the MP for St Ann’s East ... our Prime Min­is­ter may have some age, but she’s well re­spect­ed and she has done more for this coun­try than any one of them sit­ting on that (PNM) side!”

Mo­hit said on so­cial me­dia, “... the en­tire coun­try is against what St Ann’s East said! The peo­ple re­ject­ed that in April 2025 and they’ll nev­er sup­port the PNM be­cause of that type of be­hav­iour!”

Dis­miss­ing Gads­by-Dol­ly’s view of T&T be­ing in a so­cial cri­sis, Mo­hit cit­ed her min­istry’s achieve­ment re­port. “My Prime Min­is­ter sent me on a press con­fer­ence and I used this ... but (Gads­by-Dol­ly) sat here as a min­is­ter, yet I nev­er saw one achieve­ment re­port ... not one thing she could have said she did for T&T’s stu­dents. In­stead, she de­fends crazi­ness and us­es words against re­spect­ed cit­i­zens!”

Mo­hit added, “What ‘so­cial cri­sis’? We en­tered of­fice and ho­n­oured se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion and pub­lic as­sis­tance grant pay­ments, adults and mi­nors’ dis­abil­i­ty pay­ments, pay­ments for NGOs, statu­to­ry and sim­i­lar bod­ies...”

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jear­lean John al­so “jammed” the PNM on the “old” is­sue as she replied to road work queries.

“Friend, you could call me old too y’ know....” John told them.

An­a­lysts: Fo­cus on the is­sues

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath felt that both PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Gads­by-Dol­ly should know bet­ter than to hurl con­tro­ver­sial re­marks at each oth­er, cre­at­ing dis­trac­tions when they should be fo­cused on T&T’s is­sues.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said, “We’ve got­ten so caught up in an­i­mos­i­ty and ac­ri­mo­ny that we’ve for­got­ten our pol­i­tics isn’t on­ly about in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­course, but we al­so for­got what good pi­cong is. Let me ask a crit­i­cal ques­tion - the PNM and oth­ers re­fer to the UNC as ‘dunce’, the UNC re­serves the right to re­tal­i­ate. If peo­ple are get­ting of­fend­ed on ei­ther sides, then grow up and change the dis­course but start with re­duc­ing the hate.”