PM declares union protest a bust; tells marchers to return to work Monday

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­clared yes­ter­day’s trade union protest against her Gov­ern­ment a “bust,” telling those who par­tic­i­pat­ed that their mes­sage had been re­ject­ed by the pop­u­la­tion and that they should re­turn to work on Mon­day.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so shared an aer­i­al pho­to­graph of the demon­stra­tion via so­cial me­dia, which ap­peared to show a low turnout, while sug­gest­ing that the me­dia would not pub­lish the im­age. How­ev­er, the pho­to­graph has since been chal­lenged by peo­ple who ques­tioned whether it was tak­en at the height of the protest, ar­gu­ing that it did not ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect the num­ber of peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the march.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment fol­low­ing the demon­stra­tion in Port-of-Spain, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the march as a “long-tout­ed hate protest against the UNC,” which she claimed had “spec­tac­u­lar­ly failed.”

“The protest has bust, back to work on Mon­day, en­joy the week­end, your Prime Min­is­ter loves you,” she de­clared.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused those in­volved in the demon­stra­tion of be­ing mo­ti­vat­ed by racial and po­lit­i­cal ha­tred to­wards her ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­sist­ing that the turnout re­flect­ed a re­jec­tion of their po­si­tion.

“To those who protest­ed to­day, 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 and al­ways re­mem­ber: 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.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sought to dis­cred­it the protest’s sup­port base, claim­ing that sev­er­al groups she as­so­ci­at­ed with the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion had failed to turn out in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers.

“The fake eat a food elite, lo­cal drug mafia, and the rich In­di­ans, Chi­nese and Mid­dle East­ern­ers who the PNM MPs en­riched at the ex­pense of the work­ing and mid­dle class­es dur­ing their time in gov­ern­ment failed to show up in their num­bers in PoS,” she claimed.

Her crit­i­cism fol­lowed days of in­creas­ing­ly heat­ed ex­changes be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and sec­tions of the trade union move­ment over the rea­sons be­hind the protests.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has sug­gest­ed that op­po­si­tion to her ad­min­is­tra­tion is be­ing dri­ven by racial and po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, a po­si­tion re­ject­ed by trade union lead­ers, who in­sist their demon­stra­tions are fo­cused on work­ers’ con­cerns.

In yes­ter­day’s state­ment, the PM main­tained that protests mo­ti­vat­ed by ha­tred were des­tined to fail.

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

She al­so ques­tioned whether the demon­stra­tors had chal­lenged Op­po­si­tion MPs over un­re­solved wage ne­go­ti­a­tions dur­ing the PNM’s tenure in of­fice.

“Hope­ful­ly, the few per­sons in­volved got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask PNM MPs about their fail­ure to pay back­pay, in­crease salaries and of­fer more than ze­ro per cent in­creas­es over the last ten years,” she said.

De­spite her crit­i­cism of the pro­test­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­tend­ed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to unions main­tain­ing di­a­logue with her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“To the unions and union lead­ers who con­tin­ue to work with the Gov­ern­ment, we ap­pre­ci­ate your pa­tience and we will work to en­sure that all your out­stand­ing is­sues are re­solved as soon as pos­si­ble.”

She al­so thanked the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice for en­sur­ing that no vi­o­lence oc­curred against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens along the protest route.