Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the cen­tral fig­ure in to­day's po­lit­i­cal land­scape, has ad­mit­ted that her job is one of the hard­est in the coun­try.As Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to be on call and avail­able 24/7, she is open to crit­i­cism and praise in equal mea­sure and is of­ten judged on her wardrobe and ap­pear­ance rather than her po­lit­i­cal savvy.

Un­der con­stant scruti­ny and bru­tal Face­book at­tacks, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has lived through plat­form slips, mis­fires and at­tacks on her poli­cies, her de­ci­sions and her abil­i­ty to lead. As the first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is with­out a set tem­plate to guide her ac­tions and seems to some to be carv­ing her own path, some­times in un­ortho­dox ways, in an in­dus­try of­ten led and dom­i­nat­ed by men. In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Per­sad-Bisses­sar talks pol­i­tics, her fam­i­ly and run­ning the coun­try.

She has led her par­ty through four loss­es at the polls, yet re­mains pop­u­lar among the elec­torate. For her abil­i­ty to weath­er the po­lit­i­cal storms, the Sun­day Guardian has dubbed her the Po­lit­i­cal Sur­vivor for 2013.

A ful­fill­ing job

Her role as Prime Min­is­ter comes with "great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" and an abil­i­ty to change course with a mo­ment's no­tice."No mat­ter how much you plan in ad­vance, some­thing comes up that you need to ad­dress," she said."So yes, the job is hard. For me, there's a bal­ance be­tween feel­ing the pres­sure of try­ing to make things bet­ter for every cit­i­zen, and tak­ing sat­is­fac­tion from what you can achieve."

The job, she said, is al­so "huge­ly ful­fill­ing.""Every day, you see how peo­ple's lives can be im­proved, prob­lems sort­ed out, plans com­ing to­geth­er. For ex­am­ple, every year for as long as I can re­mem­ber, we've had too many schools not re­open­ing on time be­cause the va­ca­tion build­ing works aren't fin­ished on time."We need our chil­dren to know how im­por­tant ed­u­ca­tion is. And if we want them to work hard, then the Gov­ern­ment has to work hard too. I know not every school opened as it should have.

"So next time, we need to do even bet­ter."

'The sys­tem mil­i­tates against women ris­ing'

Again, be­ing in a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has of­ten heard that she is ei­ther be­ing led or in­flu­enced by the men that make up her Cab­i­net. This she con­tin­ues to de­ny.

"We have many high­ly suc­cess­ful women in our coun­try, but the sys­tem it­self mil­i­tates against women ris­ing. Too of­ten, women give up and don't pur­sue their dreams. I would like to see more women get in­volved in pol­i­tics at the high­est lev­els, so that the coun­try would see us for what we are and not pay at­ten­tion to the shoes we wear and the dress we choose. We don't no­tice that in men.

"I am my own woman...and was, long be­fore I be­came PM. At­tend­ing to my fam­i­ly's needs on­ly made me stronger as a leader be­cause if you know how to run a home and en­sure each per­son's par­tic­u­lar need is met, it's the best lead­er­ship train­ing you can have."

Dress code red?

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while she could ac­cept that her gen­der would be a sub­ject of in­ter­est, it seemed slight­ly su­per­fi­cial that what she wore would trump what she said."I am the first woman to hold this post in this coun­try. Nat­u­ral­ly, my gen­der was a point of in­ter­est, but too of­ten this can be su­per­fi­cial. Every PM be­fore me at­tend­ed all man­ner of func­tions, but how of­ten did you see a re­port on what they were wear­ing and how much the suit cost?" she asked.

"What con­cerns me more is not these dis­trac­tions, but the sug­ges­tions that women can­not do this job, or hold any lead­er­ship po­si­tion. This is plain sex­ism. This is what is hap­pen­ing with those claims about the ca­bal. It's based on the prej­u­dice that as a woman I am too weak to gov­ern in my own right, and that women have to have men pulling the strings. Well, that's not true. I lis­ten to a wide range of opin­ions–you have to, in this po­si­tion–but I take my own de­ci­sions."

'You can't be thin-skinned'

"Pol­i­tics has its ups and downs, and if you are thin-skinned and get dis­cour­aged every time some­one is crit­i­cal of you, then you won't suc­ceed. From the start, I knew that I would nev­er be able to please every­one with every­thing I do. Per­haps this was al­ways go­ing to be hard­er for our Gov­ern­ment giv­en the huge ex­pec­ta­tions peo­ple had back in 2010. But my fo­cus has re­mained the same–to do some­thing to el­e­vate peo­ple and make a bet­ter coun­try."

As a politi­cian, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was forced to grow a thick skin and face crit­i­cism af­ter mak­ing dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions."Not every de­ci­sion I have made has been pop­u­lar, but I have al­ways want­ed the best for our coun­try. And I've tried to bring a new style of lead­er­ship by be­ing ready to ad­mit when things go wrong. Not shift the blame, but pledge my­self to putting it right.

"You can't run away from crit­i­cism. This year, some peo­ple were say­ing I should post­pone the lo­cal elec­tions. But I took an oath to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion, and that in­cludes pro­tect­ing peo­ple's de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights. No gov­ern­ment can take up­on it­self to with­hold the peo­ple's right to vote and to choose. And though we had some elec­toral loss­es, we gained some­thing of im­mense val­ue. We heard loud and clear from the peo­ple about what they want­ed from my Gov­ern­ment," she said.

God, her hus­band, help her through rough times

She said her be­lief in God and sup­port from her hus­band, Dr Gre­go­ry Bisses­sar, helps her through the tough­est of times."With­out God, noth­ing is pos­si­ble. You see, re­li­gion–in whichev­er way one prac­tices it–is a sol­id, bind­ing force that keeps an in­di­vid­ual ground­ed, and a com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er and fo­cused on goals. That is why you have heard me say in speech af­ter speech–hold my hand...let us put God in front and walk be­hind. Be­cause that is the on­ly way.

"As hu­man be­ings, we can­not even be­gin to com­pre­hend the great­ness of God. How­ev­er you per­ceive him, He is al­ways with us and we must al­ways put him in front," she said."I'm al­so so for­tu­nate in my hus­band, Gre­go­ry. He doesn't say what he thinks I want to hear; he says what he thinks is right and that makes him one of my great pil­lars of strength...in those mo­ments when the de­mands of the job be­come ex­treme, I draw a lot of strength from my home and my grand­chil­dren."

Chief high­light of 2013

Head­ing in­to the next po­lit­i­cal year, the last be­fore the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-due gen­er­al elec­tion in 2015, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said chief among her high­lights this year was the trip to South Africa with Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for the cer­e­mo­ni­al view­ing of late icon Nel­son Man­dela.She said she would al­ways re­mem­ber the "spir­it of uni­ty and na­tion­al­ism" dis­played be­tween the two op­pos­ing par­ties as they put aside po­lit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship af­ter Man­dela's pass­ing.

"I am al­so proud of the way we put the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple first in our con­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms, such as the Pro­por­tion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Bill for Al­der­men in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem. It was a first step to the kind of con­sti­tu­tion­al change that you will see in 2014.

'You can't do­ev­ery­thing for every­body'

"Again, when one of my own par­ty's MPs changed sides, I re­quest­ed the Speak­er of the House de­clare the seat va­cant. We lost a seat in Par­lia­ment as a re­sult, but what was more im­por­tant was the prin­ci­ple on which I act­ed," she said.

"I know that in gov­ern­ment you can't do every­thing for every­one; it's just not pos­si­ble. So I fo­cus on what I can do and how we can do it well. When I see a hap­py fam­i­ly mov­ing in­to their new home, or a smile on a child's face be­cause they've had the med­ical treat­ment they need, or our el­ders able to live more com­fort­ably...these things are price­less."

New Con­sti­tu­tion for 2014

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she has al­ready set a course of po­lit­i­cal ac­tion for next year.

"I am sure the na­tion would be pleased that we would have a new Con­sti­tu­tion to show very ear­ly in the new year. It has tak­en time, but I would pre­fer to de­liv­er re­forms born out of the de­sires and am­bi­tions of the peo­ple, so that those re­forms will last. An­oth­er im­por­tant area will be health. I've seen for my­self that we have some re­al­ly ex­cel­lent health cen­tres around the coun­try, and if we could get the oth­ers up to that stan­dard too, in the qual­i­ty of care, how long you have to wait to be seen and so on, then it would make a huge dif­fer­ence to peo­ple's every­day lives. So this is some­thing I'm mak­ing a pri­or­i­ty for 2014."

Fo­cus on cre­at­ingsafer com­mu­ni­ties

She said her Gov­ern­ment will al­so see "great im­prove­ments in in­fra­struc­ture with a con­tin­ued em­pha­sis in rur­al re­de­vel­op­ment. We will see even greater ef­forts in our fight against crime."She said the re­duced crime sta­tis­tics were "not rel­e­vant" if peo­ple re­mained afraid in the coun­try.

"We have pro­vid­ed the po­lice with the re­sources they need and will con­tin­ue to sup­port mea­sures to bring crim­i­nals to jus­tice. There has been a re­duc­tion in crime, but sta­tis­tics are not rel­e­vant so long as peo­ple live in fear. So our fo­cus in 2014 must be to cre­ate safer com­mu­ni­ties and to make peo­ple feel safe."

'I reaf­firm to lis­ten more'

So as the year comes to a close, what does the Prime Min­is­ter re­solve to do for 2014?

"Both per­son­al­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly, I don't call them res­o­lu­tions, I call them reaf­fir­ma­tions. Per­son­al­ly, what I reaf­firm is to be a bet­ter wife, moth­er and grand­moth­er; to be a bet­ter sis­ter and friend. To push the bound­aries of com­pas­sion so that–de­spite my pub­lic du­ties–no one feels that I have not giv­en enough of my­self. Po­lit­i­cal­ly, what I reaf­firm to do is to lis­ten more, ap­pre­ci­ate the needs and wants of the peo­ple more, ex­tend the bound­aries of so­cial jus­tice and reach even fur­ther so that those fam­i­lies we have not yet reached. We do reach!

"Equal­ly im­por­tant is the need to bring a greater align­ment to what I know my Gov­ern­ment is de­liv­er­ing, with the peo­ple's be­lief that their needs are be­ing met and that their faith in us was well placed."