Kamla Persad-Bissessar is the epitome of brilliance, power, strength, selflessness, beauty?and royalty. I remember as a little girl at Iere High always saying to myself that "she (Kamla) would be the principal of the school some day," not knowing then that there was a wider world yet to be privileged with her dedication and selfless contributions. It irked me terribly when Patrick Manning made reference to "her and her kind" and when he used words like "weak" and "not strong" to describe her.
Had he known Kamla before, or anything about her at all, he would have known that as a child, a teenager and a young woman she was always brilliant, always leading, at the helm, daring, caring, showing no partiality for the more well-off, the more beautiful?nor any?bias against any ethnic group. He would have known that her captivating smile and her affable voice are the same ones which she wore and carried at school.?Kamla had a striking personality for all the right reasons, so much so that it left indelible impressions on the minds of her peers and schoolmates. ??
As an adult she continued to maintain her status quo and excelled by leaps and bounds in all her academic endeavours, her parliamentary duties and also as a mother. So that Persad-Bissessar is real in every sense of the word, has grit and mettle yet to be realised and did not emerge overnight. She has blossomed into the best. Success will be hers on May 24 since on reflecting on the pictures in my mind of her, always at the fore as a luminous shining star since she was but a little girl, I know that she was destined?to be a supreme leader one day. It will happen, it was meant to be.
M Emrith
Via e-mail