PM celebrates son’s entry into legal profession

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day wel­comed her son, Kris Shi­va Bisses­sar, to the le­gal pro­fes­sion, af­ter he grad­u­at­ed with a law de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Speak­ing with the me­dia af­ter her son and niece, Di­vya Maraj, re­ceived their scrolls at UWI Spec, St Au­gus­tine, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the oc­ca­sion as a dou­ble cel­e­bra­tion and a proud mo­ment for the fam­i­ly.

“I’m very proud. He has joined my pro­fes­sion. I think it’s one of the best pro­fes­sions in the world. I’m very hap­py to have him in this field,” she said.

Asked about her on­ly child en­ter­ing the same pro­fes­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­flect­ed on the par­al­lels be­tween their jour­neys.

“He start­ed off like me. He did his first de­gree in ed­u­ca­tion. He, like me, was a teacher. Wel­come to the pro­fes­sion,” she said.

The PM’s mes­sage to the grad­u­at­ing class echoed the sen­ti­ments of the late Ca­lyp­so King of the World, Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co - ed­u­ca­tion re­mains the surest route out of pover­ty.

“Chil­dren go to school and learn. There is no pass­port out of pover­ty. There is no key out of pover­ty ex­cept ed­u­ca­tion. So to all young peo­ple, the best is to go for­ward and con­tin­ue to learn. I was a per­pet­u­al stu­dent, by the way. I con­tin­ue to study,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Bisses­sar, who al­ready holds a de­gree in ed­u­ca­tion, said he is now fol­low­ing a path sim­i­lar to his moth­er’s.

“For pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons, I thought law would bet­ter suit me,” he said.

Re­flect­ing on his aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney, Bisses­sar cred­it­ed his moth­er’s guid­ance and sup­port.

“She gives a lot of ad­vice in terms of how to ap­proach cer­tain is­sues and prob­lems and al­ways of­fers to give me as­sis­tance. Some­times I try to take on board what she says and in­cor­po­rate it in­to my own stud­ies. And just sup­port­ive gen­er­al­ly,” he said.

He ac­knowl­edged that bal­anc­ing the de­mands of study was one of the great­est chal­lenges he faced but said he de­vel­oped a sys­tem that worked by com­bin­ing his moth­er’s ad­vice with his own meth­ods.

“The ob­sta­cles were re­al­ly to do with the study­ing and find­ing time to study prop­er­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly. My mom gave me some ad­vice that I tried to in­cor­po­rate, and then I de­vel­oped my own pat­tern. I learned what worked for me.”

Ear­li­er, vale­dic­to­ri­an Karis­sa La­caille, who grad­u­at­ed with first-class ho­n­ours, urged fel­low grad­u­ates to re­mem­ber the val­ue of prepa­ra­tion, draw­ing on the les­son to “mea­sure twice and cut once.” She al­so re­flect­ed on fail­ure as part of an on­go­ing di­a­logue be­tween the cre­ator and the cre­at­ed.

La­caille re­called the chal­lenges many stu­dents faced dur­ing their year two, se­mes­ter two ex­am­i­na­tions, an ex­pe­ri­ence she sug­gest­ed some were still re­cov­er­ing from. De­spite ar­riv­ing at law school through dif­fer­ent paths, she said the grad­u­at­ing class now shared a com­mon pur­pose: us­ing their ed­u­ca­tion to make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence in so­ci­ety.

“The world needs at­tor­neys who will ask not on­ly what would the law per­mit, but al­so what does jus­tice ne­ces­si­tate?While our de­grees will open doors, our char­ac­ter will de­ter­mine what we do once we walk through them.”

Among those grad­u­at­ing were Jonathan Nan­ton, son of the late vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and teacher Joel Nan­ton, and Tafawa Pierre, son of Grena­da op­po­si­tion leader Em­ma­lin Pierre.