PM blanks African Emancipation Day celebrations, hits back over backlash

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has launched a scathing cri­tique against her de­trac­tors, claim­ing they are “con­sumed with an ir­ra­tional ha­tred that has dri­ven them de­ranged” as she fierce­ly re­pu­di­at­ed the back­lash sur­round­ing her ab­sence from yes­ter­day’s African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day ob­ser­vances in the cap­i­tal city.

Clar­i­fy­ing that she had nev­er com­mit­ted to at­tend­ing the func­tion host­ed by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee at the Lidj Ya­su Omowale Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, the Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that she had cho­sen in­stead to spend ded­i­cat­ed, pri­vate time with her fam­i­ly over the hol­i­day—a de­ci­sion she ar­gued has been un­fair­ly politi­cised by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and its base.

“I re­al­ly don’t know what PNM MPs and their sup­port­ers want. When I wear African cloth­ing they curse me; if I don’t wear it they curse me. When I par­tic­i­pate in African cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties, they curse me; when I don’t par­tic­i­pate, they curse me. When I speak to praise the con­tri­bu­tions of Afro Trinida­di­ans, they curse me; if I don’t speak to praise, they curse me. I don’t know what the PNM MPs and their sup­port­ers want. They ap­pear con­sumed with ir­ra­tional ha­tred that it sends them de­ranged,” she said in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia on her ab­sence.

Ad­dress­ing spe­cif­ic ac­cu­sa­tions that she had aban­doned a sched­uled ap­pear­ance, Per­sad-Bisses­sar firm­ly re­ject­ed the nar­ra­tive that she had backed out of a pri­or en­gage­ment.

“I nev­er com­mit­ted to at­tend­ing that event. I at­tend­ed two African eman­ci­pa­tion events on Thurs­day; I am spend­ing the day with my fam­i­ly. I’m sor­ry that those per­sons who were ea­ger­ly wait­ing to in­sult and curse me were dis­ap­point­ed. They should not wor­ry; there will al­ways be an­oth­er event where they may have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hurl curs­es and in­sults at me,” she ex­plained.

To re­in­force her com­mit­ment to the na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tions, the Prime Min­is­ter un­der­scored that her of­fi­cial ob­ser­vances had tak­en place ear­li­er in the week.

“I at­tend­ed two won­der­ful eman­ci­pa­tion events on Thurs­day in PoS and San Fer­nan­do. Those were beau­ti­ful events or­gan­ised by the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and an­oth­er by Min­is­ter Ben­jamin. You ac­tu­al­ly have a pho­to of me at one of the func­tions on your pa­per’s front page to­day,” she said.

De­spite her ex­pla­na­tion, ex­pec­ta­tions on the ground had re­mained high, as the Prime Min­is­ter had orig­i­nal­ly been card­ed as the fea­ture speak­er at the Lidj Ya­su Omowale Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage, where she was sched­uled to de­liv­er an ad­dress at 3 pm.

The at­mos­phere shift­ed abrupt­ly when Dr Asha Kam­bon, di­rec­tor of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of T&T, an­nounced to the crowd that the Prime Min­is­ter was ul­ti­mate­ly “un­able to at­tend.”

This sud­den an­nounce­ment trig­gered boos, cheers, and au­di­ble shouts of “Thank God” echo­ing through­out the venue.

Seek­ing to main­tain the spir­it of the day, Kam­bon stepped in to re­store or­der, re­mind­ing at­ten­dees of both the non-par­ti­san na­ture of the cel­e­bra­tions and the cul­tur­al ex­pec­ta­tion of hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

“When we have a guest in our house, no mat­ter which guest we have in our house and you know one thing about Eman­ci­pa­tion is that it is not par­ti­san. When we have a guest in our house and guests in our house, we treat them with re­spect the way we treat any guest in our house,” she said, re­it­er­at­ing, “Any guest is treat­ed with the same re­spect. I know peo­ple have their own per­son­al feel­ings and maybe they are think­ing all sorts of thoughts, but what I ask you to do is hold those thoughts be­cause a guest in our house is a guest that is well treat­ed.”

The gen­er­al sen­ti­ment among many in at­ten­dance re­mained one of dis­ap­point­ment over the Prime Min­is­ter’s ab­sence.

Sev­er­al at­ten­dees ex­pressed that a short vis­it would have gone a long way, feel­ing that she should have made an ap­pear­ance “even for half an hour.”

“It would have been nice to hear her speak, but we don’t know (the cir­cum­stances) and we have to re­spect that,” one woman shared.

In 2025, the Prime Min­is­ter at­tend­ed the event and gave the fea­ture ad­dress.

Fol­low­ing pub­lic re­ac­tions to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ab­sence, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John pushed back against par­ti­san crit­i­cism, em­pha­sis­ing the PM’s ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions across T&T, reaf­firm­ing her long-stand­ing ded­i­ca­tion to the African com­mu­ni­ty and high­light­ed her ex­ten­sive sched­ule of Eman­ci­pa­tion com­mit­ments lead­ing up to and dur­ing the hol­i­day.

“The Prime Min­is­ter at­tend­ed so many Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions. The high­light of her cel­e­brat­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion was the pro­gramme that the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Cul­ture had in San Fer­nan­do, which was a sold out event that is on both news­pa­pers, high­light­ed in both news­pa­pers; she sup­port­ed, she spon­sored and she was there in per­son.

“Plus, we had the big ma­jor Eman­ci­pa­tion lunch at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre un­til 11 in the night, cel­e­brat­ing. It’s a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how you feel, the love she feels for all peo­ple, but par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of African de­scent and the strug­gles they face. She said that par­tic­u­lar­ly when she ad­dressed us at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre,” John said.

Told about the boos aimed at the PM from the crowd, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin quick­ly jumped in, say­ing this was “mis­di­rect­ed” as she sug­gest­ed that me­dia at­ten­tion should in­stead be fo­cused on na­tion­al cul­tur­al icons who re­quire sup­port.

“I would think that was mis­di­rect­ed and where con­cern should be, es­pe­cial­ly on a day like to­day I’m not see­ing re­porters ask­ing me con­cern­ing Miss El­la An­dall, whose free­dom chants is what we march to, what we sing to, and un­for­tu­nate­ly that she is in St Ann’s and I see no con­cern be­ing made for that icon,” she said.

The min­is­ter, in a re­lease is­sued late yes­ter­day, called for pri­va­cy and dig­ni­ty re­gard­ing An­dall and her fam­i­ly.

She added, “You’re con­cerned by some­one who is a free­dom fight­er for Trinidad and To­ba­go, no oth­er than the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. While we un­der­stand your sen­ti­ments, but best be­lieve that she is al­ways here, al­ways with us, and the fact that she may not be here, prob­a­bly prop­er pro­to­col with re­gards to the in­vi­ta­tion. I could tell you that there are a lot of mis­steps hap­pen­ing, but at the end of the day, we stand, and we do not let par­ti­san pol­i­tics de­ter us from any space.”

John al­so ad­dressed spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s sched­ule and health, not­ing that Per­sad-Bisses­sar called her three times yes­ter­day morn­ing to dis­cuss Gov­ern­ment busi­ness.

Dis­miss­ing claims of racial bias or favouritism, John as­sert­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar serves the en­tire na­tion, say­ing the PM is “not a Prime Min­is­ter for one race, or one seg­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty.”

“She is a Prime Min­is­ter for all and what I saw on Thurs­day was a Prime Min­is­ter in a full African gear.

“Even when it was not fash­ion­able, our Prime Min­is­ter proud­ly cham­pi­oned African peo­ple and their cause. So I am proud of my Prime Min­is­ter,” she said.

Asked about whether the PM was in good health, John de­scribed her health as “ex­cel­lent”.

Mean­while, asked about her own feel­ings on be­ing booed by the crowd dur­ing yes­ter­day’s cel­e­bra­tions at In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, Ben­jamin at­trib­uted the hos­til­i­ty strict­ly to par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics.

“We are in Port-of-Spain. We are sur­round­ed by five strong PNM con­stituen­cies and even the day lead­ing up to this, I got phone calls that if I come in a cer­tain space, some­thing would hap­pen. It hap­pened dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son; I was threat­ened if I go on to the Skin­ner’s Park, but that is not go­ing to stop this Gov­ern­ment from do­ing the work of the peo­ple. We were elect­ed to serve, not a se­lect­ed few, but all,” she said.