To­day, April 22, 2012, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, cel­e­brates her land­mark 60th birth­day the way she's done it for many, many years now-in a prayer ses­sion with her friends and fam­i­ly. Hers is a life char­ac­terised by re­mark­able his­toric achieve­ments and in re­cent times po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies.

She be­came the coun­try's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter, and first ever fe­male po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, the main par­ty which leads the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, a coali­tion of five par­ties, formed for the gen­er­al elec­tion of May 24, 2010.

Be­fore, she was the first woman to serve as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter, and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. She is mar­ried to Dr Gre­go­ry Bisses­sar and has one son, a daugh­ter-in-law and two grand­chil­dren, whom she is known to dote up­on.

She was born on April 22, 1952, in rur­al Siparia at a time when the coun­try was still un­der the con­trol of the British Crown, to a Hin­du fam­i­ly of eight chil­dren, but was al­so bap­tised in the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Faith as a child, which deeply in­flu­enced her dri­ve to en­sure that this sect, long op­pressed by Colo­nial laws, gained ab­solute free­dom of wor­ship and equal­i­ty by get­ting State as­sis­tance for their pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tend­ed the Siparia Pres­by­ter­ian pri­ma­ry and then, Iere High School in Siparia, and, with what she has termed the "for­ti­tude, for­ward think­ing and dri­ve of her moth­er who de­fied male dom­i­nance," then broke with tra­di­tion and pur­sued her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion at, Nor­wood Tech­ni­cal Col­lege (Eng­land), where she mar­ried her hus­band Dr Bisses­sar. There, she al­so worked as a so­cial work­er with the Church of Eng­land Chil­dren's So­ci­ety of Lon­don.

On her re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go, she taught at a sec­ondary school be­fore mi­grat­ing with her hus­band to Ja­maica in 1972, where he pur­sued med­ical stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona Cam­pus, while she taught at the St An­drew High School in Kingston, served as a con­sul­tant lec­tur­er at the Ja­maica Col­lege of In­sur­ance and lec­tured at UWI, Mona, in the 14 years they lived there.

In­spired by the black pow­er move­ment

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has cred­it­ed her ex­pe­ri­ences of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and so­cial in­equity of mi­nor­i­ty women in Eng­land, and the black pow­er move­ment rag­ing through the Caribbean and in Ja­maica while she lived in those coun­tries as the in­spi­ra­tion for pur­su­ing a ca­reer in law and the foun­da­tion of her life's mis­sion to achieve so­cial jus­tice and equal­i­ty for all.

She pur­sued a law de­gree at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, Trinidad WI, where she award­ed a BA (Hons), a Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion, a BA of Laws (Hons) and a Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate and there­after lec­tured for six years at UWI, St Au­gus­tine be­fore be­com­ing a full time at­tor­ney.

In 2006 she ob­tained an Ex­ec­u­tive Mas­ters in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (EM­BA) from the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, Trinidad. In 1986, on re­turn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­alised that women, chil­dren and many poor peo­ple in her coun­try were still bad­ly suf­fer­ing from eco­nom­ic and so­cial in­equity and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

She was es­pe­cial­ly moved by the plight of many women and chil­dren who were vic­tims of a tra­di­tion­al male dom­i­nat­ed so­ci­ety and bore the brunt of vi­o­lence, abuse and pover­ty. In­tent on mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, she en­tered pol­i­tics as a coun­cil­lor for the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, a field vir­tu­al­ly un­touched by women at the time, and more so, women of East In­di­an de­scent.

By 1992, she was a Sen­a­tor with the NAR, and in 1995, she was elect­ed UNC Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Siparia in the Gen­er­al Elec­tions of that year.

Cre­at­ed his­to­ry in T&T

She made his­to­ry when she was ap­point­ed as the coun­try's first fe­male At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in 1995 and lat­er, the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, where she pi­o­neered and achieved in just two years uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion. Apart from be­ing the first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, she al­so held the post of the first fe­male Com­mon­wealth Chair­per­son-in-Of­fice un­til 2011.

As Prime Min­is­ter, in the less than two years she's spent in of­fice, she has pi­o­neered sev­er­al rev­o­lu­tion­ary ini­tia­tives in the de­vel­op­ing world-free lap­tops for all sec­ondary school chil­dren, a na­tion­al and re­gion­al Chil­dren's Life Fund to help needy chil­dren ac­cess life sav­ing surgery, and a Help­ing Hand ini­tia­tive, which sees pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor en­ter­pris­es through­out the Caribbean band­ing to­geth­er to pro­vide Caribbean coun­tries with dis­as­ter re­lief.

As the Chair of the Com­mon­wealth, she be­came in­ter­na­tion­al­ly known for her pi­o­neer­ing work as an ad­vo­cate for the ed­u­ca­tion­al, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial em­pow­er­ment of women and girls in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al dis­cus­sions and projects in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to this end, which aim at en­list­ing the as­sis­tance and sup­port of glob­al lead­ers.

Two in­ter­na­tion­al mag­a­zines-Time and For­eign Pol­i­cy, with­in months of each oth­er in 2010, named her as one of the top ten fe­male lead­ers around the globe for her pi­o­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tion to pol­i­tics and so­cial re­struc­tur­ing and gen­der equal­i­ty in the world while Glam­our award­ed her the 2010 Woman of the Year (along­side five oth­er fe­male lead­ers, chiefly of Eu­ro­pean and African coun­tries) for these achieve­ments.

She has been the sub­ject of two ma­jor books in Trinidad and To­ba­go-a Book of her speech­es through the years –Through the Po­lit­i­cal Glass Ceil­ing (2010) and a col­lec­tion of her in­flu­ences in so­ci­ety called "Kam­la-As­cent of a Woman (2010). In the past two years, her ad­min­is­tra­tion has been char­ac­terised by some po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies and she has faced her own mi­nor health chal­lenges.

Those close to her say she has a long­stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion as a pi­o­neer­ing woman with a trail­blaz­ing style of lead­er­ship that is a mix of her in­de­pen­dent, in­tel­li­gent, charis­mat­ic, com­pas­sion­ate and lov­able per­son­al­i­ty still re­mains her trade­mark.

To­day, we wish the Prime Min­is­ter very best birth­day wish­es and God's bless­ings of con­tin­ued good health, wis­dom and in­spi­ra­tion as she con­tin­ues in her task of pub­lic ser­vice and gov­er­nance of the coun­try. Hap­py di­a­mond birth­day Madam Prime Min­is­ter!