Browne: PM a ‘clear and present danger’ to T&T democracy

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne has launched a scathing at­tack on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­scrib­ing her as a “clear and present dan­ger” to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s democ­ra­cy and ac­cus­ing her of in­creas­ing­ly de­mon­is­ing those who chal­lenge her Gov­ern­ment.

Browne’s com­ments came in re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­dem­na­tion of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill in the Sen­ate.

Fol­low­ing the vote, the Prime Min­is­ter la­belled the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors “sa­tan­ic,” “demons” and “scum­bags,” and an­nounced that her Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent bench.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Browne ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mak­ing a habit of pub­licly in­sult­ing and den­i­grat­ing in­di­vid­u­als who ques­tion Gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions or pro­pose changes to leg­is­la­tion.

“Her pub­lic mes­sag­ing has be­come in­creas­ing­ly di­vi­sive and bel­liger­ent,” he said.

Browne al­so crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­la­tion­ship with the me­dia and lev­elled broad­er ac­cu­sa­tions against her ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing claims that per­ceived po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents have been tar­get­ed.

He fur­ther al­leged that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was us­ing the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to en­cour­age sup­port­ers to dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect con­sti­tu­tion­al and par­lia­men­tary in­sti­tu­tions.

“More and more, she has be­come not the leader of the na­tion but rather a tyrant leader of on­ly those who sup­port her blind­ly and march along the path of vi­cious­ness,” Browne said.

His re­marks come amid mount­ing crit­i­cism of the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­sponse to the In­de­pen­dent bench.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors An­tho­ny Vieira and Dr Mar­lene Attzs have al­so re­ject­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments, with Vieira de­scrib­ing her de­ci­sion to refuse fu­ture amend­ments from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors as “deeply re­gret­table.”

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill was ul­ti­mate­ly passed by the Sen­ate with a 16-15 vote af­ter Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark ex­er­cised his cast­ing vote to break a 15-15 dead­lock.

Browne end­ed his state­ment by de­clar­ing: “This na­tion is far, far bet­ter than its cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter, and by God’s Grace it will sur­vive.”