A year called Kamla! PM’s historic comeback earns her GML’s Newsmaker 2025

GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There was ob­vi­ous­ly on­ly one choice for News­mak­er of 2025—Kam­la!

And that is whether her name was cried out in joy and love by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sup­port­ers, ut­tered with def­er­ence and rev­er­ence by her Gov­ern­ment team, hailed with fra­ter­nal warmth by the Unit­ed States and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al as­so­ciates or mut­tered in an­noy­ance and dis­gust by Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­bers, shout­ed in anger by Venezue­lan lead­ers and cit­i­zens, aired with as­ton­ish­ment and dis­ap­point­ment by re­gion­al lead­ers, or ex­pressed in gen­er­al con­cern—or meati­er lan­guage—by as­sort­ed sec­tors of T&T’s pop­u­la­tion.

The year 2025 saw Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar writ­ing her­self in­to the top notch of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum—and the his­to­ry books—once again, with a come­back that has been hailed as be­ing on par with that of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, now al­so in his sec­ond stint as pres­i­dent.

And as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ninth Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is just as con­tro­ver­sial as the US’s 47th pres­i­dent, whose “Amer­i­ca First” pol­i­cy has been high­ly em­u­lat­ed by her Gov­ern­ment, where T&T is con­cerned.

It was a year that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, 73, showed that old­er women were a force to be reck­oned with and a year when the UNC’s trade­mark yel­low be­came “Gold­en”, as Per­sad-Bisses­sar led her par­ty in­to ful­fill­ing the lyrics of Huntrix’s big 2025 hit of the same name.

The UNC’s first fe­male po­lit­i­cal leader, who etched her name in the male-dom­i­nat­ed halls of pow­er as the coun­try’s first fe­male prime min­is­ter in 2010, pow­ered the UNC in­to end­ing a 10-year po­lit­i­cal drought with the April 28, 2025, Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The PNM was rout­ed af­ter a two-term tenure, suf­fer­ing a crush­ing de­feat by the UNC’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests, whose MPs now oc­cu­py the right-hand side of Par­lia­ment’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, mould­ing the coali­tion since 2024, re­newed ties with part­ners from small­er par­ties and the labour move­ment, sim­i­lar to the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, which she head­ed in 2010. She co-opt­ed PNM de­fec­tors John Je­re­mie, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, Phillip Watts and oth­ers, ral­ly­ing cit­i­zens, promis­ing night­ly on plat­forms: “When UNC wins, every­body wins!”

UNC won.

When Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced vic­to­ry ear­ly on elec­tion night—af­ter a 54.4 per cent vot­er turnout—her UNC had tak­en PNM strong­holds in San Fer­nan­do and the East-West Cor­ri­dor, while the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty boot­ed out both PNM To­ba­go MPs.

Her vic­to­ry caused res­ig­na­tions in the PNM and new lead­er­ship. Per­sad-Bisses­sar now faces a fe­male Op­po­si­tion Leader—Pen­ne­lope Beck­les. Both at­tor­neys. Both south-born.

Af­ter op­po­si­tion “wilder­ness”, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s now guar­an­teed head­lin­er sta­tus since tak­ing the oath of of­fice on May 1 made her the on­ly woman to serve as Prime Min­is­ter twice, pledg­ing to lead a “com­pas­sion­ate, in­clu­sive, and de­ci­sive” ad­min­is­tra­tion—launch­ing her prime min­is­te­r­i­al tenure with an ad­dress con­cern­ing hope, uni­ty and re­new­al, and a promise that “From Char­lot­teville to Bar­rack­pore, every­body will win.”

In these first eight months of her new Gov­ern­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it very clear that to­day’s Kam­la 2.0 is not the Kam­la of 2010. Even her record-large Gov­ern­ment team has been made acute­ly aware of this via quite stren­u­ous warn­ings of “buss head” and fir­ing for mis­deeds.

Changes Per­sad-Bisses­sar helmed with her nu­mer­i­cal­ly strong team have been felt not on­ly lo­cal­ly but re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. De­ter­mined to im­prove on her last tenure and wield­ing a steely hand, her Gov­ern­ment’s changes have, how­ev­er, left some with the view that all that glit­ters isn’t al­ways gold.

Among seek­ing to ful­fil cam­paign promis­es—in­clud­ing re­duc­ing crime—ef­fects of ul­tra-speedy moves to re­tool sys­tems, pro­grammes, ap­point­ments and cer­tain per­son­nel were ex­pan­sive and swift. Some of her Gov­ern­ment’s un­der­tak­ings have been con­tro­ver­sial and con­tentious, from the dis­man­tling of CEPEP, URP and sim­i­lar pro­grammes to state board ap­point­ments.

By year-end, her Gov­ern­ment’s changes had marked more than a dozen state board of­fi­cials, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers and heads of en­ti­ties fired or forced out via pre-re­tire­ment leave, res­ig­na­tion, ap­point­ment re­vo­ca­tion or mu­tu­al sep­a­ra­tion agree­ments. The changes con­tin­ue.

Par­lia­ment de­bates have been sim­i­lar­ly heat­ed, with Per­sad-Bisses­sar es­cap­ing—on a ban­ter ba­sis—the PNM’s bid to have her in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

Her re-elec­tion as UNC leader soon af­ter be­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter was a giv­en, es­pe­cial­ly since she was re-elect­ed un­op­posed.

Her Gov­ern­ment re­ceived praise and push­back for its 100-day per­for­mance, which in­clud­ed launch­ing a State of Emer­gency, as the PNM in­sti­tut­ed in 2024, and which re­duced crime be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and April 2025.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment’s “one love” with the US Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and its fall­out with neigh­bours—Venezuela, Cari­com and some in To­ba­go—made Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s news­mak­er sta­tus high­er even than her re­turn to of­fice, in a coun­try where the Op­po­si­tion Leader and Pres­i­dent are al­so fe­male.

Venezuela was what put her (and T&T) on the glob­al map along­side the US. Spar­ring with Venezuela first came re­gard­ing the al­leged en­try to that coun­try via T&T by “ter­ror­ists.” She warned that any il­le­gal in­cur­sion in­to T&T wa­ters would be met with dead­ly force by this coun­try’s armed forces. Venezuela deemed her state­ments “irate and un­jus­ti­fied”.

How­ev­er, the US’s launch of mil­i­tary buildup in the south­ern Caribbean in Au­gust, with the stat­ed goal of com­bat­ing drug traf­fick­ing, marked a de­vel­op­ment which dom­i­nat­ed glob­al head­lines for the rest of the year, cat­a­pult­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar and this coun­try in­to the lime­light for their strong US sup­port.

In months of US/Venezuela ten­sions and provo­ca­tions, US mis­sile strikes on al­leged drug boats, and Venezuela’s fiery re­spons­es, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s hot state­ments, lo­cal­ly and at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, where she em­barked on her first trip, held the US line. But she stressed no war will be launched from T&T.

She took ex­treme flak from Venezuela—in­clud­ing loss of en­er­gy links and name-call­ing—af­ter the vis­it of the USS Grave­ly and US Marines train­ing with the T&T De­fence Force, al­low­ing US mil­i­tary ac­cess to this coun­try’s air­ports and the in­stal­la­tion of the US radar in To­ba­go (and al­so Trinidad), where her re­port­ed flip-flop­ping on facts head­lined her lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Her view on the To­ba­go radar—and the US mil­i­tary sup­port there for the fa­cil­i­ty—cat­a­pult­ed it in­to a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion cam­paign is­sue.

De­clared per­sona non gra­ta in Venezuela and the sub­ject of street protests, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has main­tained T&T’s dis­tance from any war ef­fort and US block­ade of sanc­tioned oil tankers, and has de­fend­ed the US/T&T re­la­tion­ship on the ba­sis that the US is the “on­ly coun­try” that can de­fend T&T from any ex­ter­nal threat.

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar has host­ed In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di, Ghana rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Grena­da’s PM, woo­ing Grena­da en­er­gy deals, she skipped Cari­com’s Ju­ly sum­mit and fur­ther dis­tanced her­self from Cari­com on the ba­sis of her US sup­port and crit­i­cism of Cari­com’s call for the Caribbean zone of peace to be main­tained. The lat­est sharp re­marks were trad­ed with An­tigua, though the Prime Min­is­ter said Cab­i­net has not dis­cussed with­draw­ing from the re­gion­al group­ing.

Along­side warn­ings to her team re­gard­ing de­liv­ery in 2026, her Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est is­sue has been neg­a­tive pub­lic sen­ti­ment to the “sur­prise” Christ­mas Day le­gal no­tices of steep mo­tor ve­hi­cle fines in­creas­es and oth­er hikes in fees.

If 2025 was gold­en for Per­sad-Bisses­sar, what­ev­er the colour of 2026, she will con­tin­ue be­ing a news­mak­er of note all the way up to 2030.