Kamla: Union protest bust

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­clared that Fri­day’s protest against the Gov­ern­ment has “bust”, telling demon­stra­tors to re­turn to work on Mon­day and en­joy the week­end.

In a so­cial me­dia post fol­low­ing the demon­stra­tion in Port of Spain, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed it as a “long-tout­ed” hate protest against the UNC” and claimed it had failed to at­tract sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic sup­port.

She said an aer­i­al pho­to­graph of the demon­stra­tion showed the true size of the turnout, al­leg­ing that the me­dia would not show the im­age.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ac­cused sec­tions of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and wealthy in­di­vid­u­als of be­ing be­hind the protest, al­leg­ing that they had ben­e­fit­ed un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion at the ex­pense of work­ing and mid­dle-class cit­i­zens.

“Any­thing done be­cause of racial and po­lit­i­cal ha­tred to­wards oth­ers will al­ways fail,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so crit­i­cised the PNM’s record on work­ers’ pay, ques­tion­ing whether demon­stra­tors had asked op­po­si­tion MPs about out­stand­ing back­pay, salary in­creas­es and what she de­scribed as ze­ro per cent in­creas­es over the past decade.

She thanked the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for en­sur­ing there was no vi­o­lence against mem­bers of the pub­lic who were not in­volved in the march.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ac­knowl­edged the trade unions and their lead­ers who con­tin­ue to en­gage with the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­pre­ci­at­ed their pa­tience and would work to re­solve out­stand­ing is­sues as soon as pos­si­ble.

Ad­dress­ing those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the protest, she de­clared that their mes­sage of racial and po­lit­i­cal ha­tred had been re­ject­ed by the pop­u­la­tion.

“The march is over, your racial and po­lit­i­cal ha­tred has been re­ject­ed by the pop­u­la­tion, have a won­der­ful week­end, go back to work on Mon­day,” she said.

She end­ed the post by telling sup­port­ers and the wider pub­lic: “You have had lead­ers be­fore me, you will have lead­ers af­ter me, but you will nev­er ever have a leader who loves you more than I do.”