Browne: Trinidad and Tobago has distanced itself from PM

PNM Senator Dr Amery Browne. - Photo by Angelo Marcelle

DR AMERY BROWNE said Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has established herself as the worst PM in the history of Trinidad and Tobago. He said in the history of TT, he had never seen a population distance itself so quickly from a government.

Speaking at a press conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader, Charles Street, Port of Spain on December 30, Browne said on their worst days in office, former prime ministers ANR Robinson, Patrick Manning, Dr Keith Rowley, UNC founder Basdeo Panday, Dr Eric Williams, and even Persad-Bissessar in her first term as PM, would have given TT better service than the PM currently.

“What do we expect, what does the country want from its PM? A PM is the chief diplomat and representative of the country in the region and overseas. What Kamla Persad-Bissessar has done is take the legacy of great statesmen like ANR Robinson and others and has really reduced that to some very simplistic talking points and attacks against our regional family in the form of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), attacks against other heads of state within the Caribbean region, having government ministers using the most deplorable language, personal attacks against family members of heads of states, all of these are unprecedented developments in our region and have never occurred in TT before. This has been a lowering of the national standard, not by the people of this country, but by the PM and her Cabinet.”

Browne said the Leader of the Opposition has been calling on the PM to address the people of TT about her vision for TT.

“She has been calling on the PM to ‘share your vision with us, explain your positions, explain your rhetoric, explain your policies, explain where you see TT in the Caribbean Community, explain your bizarre foreign policy positions.'

"The PM has steadfastly refused to do so.

“If you look across the region, you would see heads of government, without exception, addressing their nations, convening media conferences and communicating with their populations. This PM continues to rely on WhatsApp messages to select journalists, posts on X and other fora, and sometimes responses to phone calls by individual reporters as opposed to something we do routinely, week after week, present ourselves, led by Pennelope Beckles-Robinson, to receive questions and engage with the media and the people.”

Browne asked whether the country was happier now than it was on May 1, when the PM had promised that in six months the population would be in a happier place. He said she does not communicate with the population. He reminded that Dr Keith Rowley was known and criticised for having regular and relentless national media conferences.

He said Persad-Bissessar was detached from the population and was doing her own thing.

“She said, ‘I will never do my own thing while my country cries out for their needs.’ No-one has done her own thing more than this PM, whether domestically, regionally and internationally. But no country is crying out more than this society right now.

“She said, ‘I will always be following you.’ But who is she following? Is she following the people of TT? Is she following the 50,000 that she fired? Is she following her predecessors in office? Is she following the chairman of Caricom at this time? Or is she following someone else, or some other voice?”

He criticised the PM for her derogation of TT by calling it a “lawless dump” with people of “sub-par intelligence” in a recent statement.

“We want to remind the PM and her government, when you want to govern by insult and innuendo, you will lose the population very quickly. And I have been around for a little while, not as long as MP Imbert, but this eight-month period is the very fastest I have seen people leave a government, supporters leave a government, a population separate itself from the words and actions of a government in our entire history.”

Browne said the PM’s statement about Caricom had nationals living abroad uneasy.

“There are many nationals of TT occupying senior positions within the region, managing hotels in the Bahamas, holding positions in oil and gas in Guyana, involved in industry in Cayman and in Barbados and all over the region, who are uncomfortable, who experience trepidation every time the PM attacks Caricom because it affects them. It affects their families, it affects their future and it truly affects all of us.”