While the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) was liv­ing a pub­lic re­la­tions dis­as­ter over its di­rec­tor­ship ap­point­ment of 31-year-old Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine, the woman's life and rep­u­ta­tion has been shat­tered.Ram­nar­ine, the for­mer week-long SIA di­rec­tor, has been forced to flee the coun­try af­ter re­port­ed­ly re­ceiv­ing sev­er­al death threats. Her el­e­va­tion to na­tion­al at­ten­tion has in­deed com­pro­mised her pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al rep­u­ta­tion.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers said she be­came the sub­ject of pub­lic ridicule, apart from the ob­vi­ous se­cu­ri­ty risks, af­ter per­son­al pic­tures of her­self, her home, and her par­ents' home were pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers.And while the SIA/SSA de­ba­cle may have hit the new PP Gov­ern­ment hard, the woman's life has been hit hard­er, ac­cord­ing to fam­i­ly mem­bers.Ram­nar­ine has made no pub­lic com­ment on the is­sue.

She did not lie on a re­sume which Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials claims was the sub­ject of mis-in­for­ma­tion, sources said.Ram­nar­ine was el­e­vat­ed to a post on a rec­om­men­da­tion made to chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She be­came a vic­tim of the same peo­ple who put her there-Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy sought self-preser­va­tion and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har apol­o­gised for the er­ror. Con­se­quent­ly, the mem­bers of the NSC dis­tanced them­selves from a blan­ket ap­proval of her ap­point­ment, save Per­sad-Bisses­sar who asked the coun­try to "move on" from the mess.

The ques­tions that re­main unan­swered are:

• Who re­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed Ram­nar­ine? Gov­ern­ment sources have named a deputy di­rec­tor.

• Giv­en the fact that she did not claim to have a de­gree in her re­sume, who was the per­son or per­sons di­rect­ing Sandy to say that she in fact had a de­gree and was suit­ably qual­i­fied?

• Or, why was such a se­nior po­si­tion of­fered to her in the first place?

The Govt found it­self in hot wa­ter af­ter Ram­nar­ine was deemed un­fit to hold the post of in­ter­im di­rec­tor of the in­tel­li­gence unit by the Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley. He claimed Ram­nar­ine was young, un­qual­i­fied and with­out the req­ui­site ex­pe­ri­ence re­quired for such a post.Even so, Ram­nar­ine's fam­i­ly mem­bers said the big­ger is­sue was why she was "so vi­cious­ly tar­get­ed," to use one close rel­a­tive's words, in the first place.

'She has been hound­ed'

Close fam­i­ly mem­bers in­sist­ed she was the vic­tim of a vi­cious per­son­al agen­da by se­nior mem­bers of the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty at­tached to a promi­nent dai­ly news­pa­per (not the Guardian), who once used to be her very best friends be­tween 2006-2007. "She has been hound­ed by the re­porters who were once her friends," a rel­a­tive claimed.

The me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers were known to be close friends and "lim­ing part­ners" with Ram­nar­ine and the pho­tos of her in a causal man­ner which were used in the news­pa­per were tak­en back then, a fam­i­ly source said.Af­ter Ram­nar­ine end­ed her friend­ship with one of the me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers, she struck up a re­la­tion­ship with a rel­a­tive of an­oth­er me­dia prac­ti­tion­er.Af­ter Ram­nar­ine end­ed her friend­ship with the me­dia work­ers and their rel­a­tives in 2007, she cut off all con­tact with them, but cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als kept try­ing to main­tain con­tact.

On her ap­pli­ca­tion for a job at the news­pa­per, a fam­i­ly source dis­closed, she had been com­plain­ing that her job at the SIA was get­ting "too dan­ger­ous and stress­ful" and was ready to move on.She un­wit­ting­ly did this, fam­i­ly mem­bers said, trust­ing her friends.Fam­i­ly mem­bers have now re­tained the ser­vices of a lawyer who is now look­ing to see if there was any ques­tion­able ac­tion on the part of the news­pa­per.