Persad-Bissessar marks 16 years as UNC leader

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress marked six­teen years of lead­er­ship un­der Po­lit­i­cal Leader and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day, recog­nis­ing a tenure that be­gan in Jan­u­ary 2010 and has spanned more than a decade and a half of par­ty and na­tion­al pol­i­tics.

In a state­ment is­sued, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­tered pub­lic life in 1987 as an alder­woman at the St Patrick Coun­ty Coun­cil. On Jan­u­ary 24, 2010, she made his­to­ry as the first woman to hold the of­fice of Po­lit­i­cal Leader in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as­sum­ing lead­er­ship of the UNC at a piv­otal mo­ment for the par­ty.

The state­ment said that since then, she has over­seen the UNC through mul­ti­ple po­lit­i­cal cy­cles, in­clud­ing two pe­ri­ods in gov­ern­ment. Her lead­er­ship has been reaf­firmed in­ter­nal­ly through four con­sec­u­tive lead­er­ship vic­to­ries, re­flect­ing sus­tained sup­port with­in the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship.

Padarath said un­der Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stew­ard­ship, the UNC has re­mained a cen­tral force in na­tion­al pol­i­tics, un­der­go­ing pe­ri­ods of re­struc­tur­ing and mod­erni­sa­tion while main­tain­ing its rel­e­vance on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape.

He said those who have worked close­ly with her have de­scribed her lead­er­ship style as firm and com­pas­sion­ate, not­ing the per­son­al sac­ri­fices and ex­tend­ed hours as­so­ci­at­ed with the role. Her tenure, he said, has been char­ac­terised by sus­tained en­gage­ment with par­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion and na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal af­fairs.

Padarath ac­knowl­edged Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­tri­bu­tions to the UNC and her role in shap­ing its di­rec­tion over six­teen years. The an­niver­sary al­so co­in­cides with her con­tin­ued ser­vice as Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go.