Geisha Kow­lessar

In the face of heavy crit­i­cism for not con­grat­u­lat­ing new­ly-elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the wake of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry last Mon­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fi­nal­ly sought to do so by post­ing a mes­sage on her Face­book page yes­ter­day.

Ad­dressed as "A let­ter to cit­i­zens of T&T," Per­sad-Bisses­sar hailed this coun­try's de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, de­scrib­ing it as a "tru­ly pre­cious thing" and adding that the re­sult of an elec­tion was an ex­pres­sion of the will of the peo­ple."All per­sons who are elect­ed should take those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties very se­ri­ous­ly in­deed and I con­grat­u­late the hun­dreds of thou­sands of you who ex­er­cised your right to vote and made this pos­si­ble.

"Again, I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late my op­po­nent Dr Kei­th Row­ley on his vic­to­ry. I wish him all the best for the sake of all our peo­ple," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Dur­ing her con­ces­sion speech at her Pe­nal con­stituen­cy of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had failed to con­grat­u­late Row­ley di­rect­ly.This drew crit­i­cism from some seg­ments of so­ci­ety and those mem­bers of her par­ty who are now ar­gu­ing she should step aside to al­low the UNC to pick a new leader and move on.

In the post­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged that cit­i­zens de­served com­pe­tent and ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance, say­ing it was her my hope that the new PNM gov­ern­ment could con­tin­ue lega­cy of per­for­mance and de­liv­ery of the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

"Per­son­al­ly, I am very proud that so many promis­es were de­liv­ered dur­ing my gov­ern­ment's time in of­fice. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship leaves our coun­try in a far bet­ter po­si­tion to­day than what we in­her­it­ed in 2010," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said."I hope the new Prime Min­is­ter will use all that has been achieved thus far, and build on it so as to en­sure that de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues."

Say­ing that her pas­sion was to serve in pub­lic of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she want­ed to make a dif­fer­ence be­cause she want­ed to im­prove lives."As the say­ing goes, with pow­er comes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. I held of­fice and pow­er and used both for the bet­ter­ment of peo­ple's lives.

"For the sake of our coun­try let us all hope Kei­th Row­ley now fol­lows that lead," she said.She al­so as­sured the UNC's sup­port­ers that the par­ty would again rise and be back stronger than ever.

"We may not hold the reins of pow­er but we will do our ut­most to be pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens and an ef­fec­tive op­po­si­tion. Rest as­sured the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship will be back stronger than ever be­fore," she said.

"In the mean­time we will do our pa­tri­ot­ic du­ty as mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion and we will pre­pare a pro­gramme that puts peo­ple at the cen­tre and our coun­try at the front."

Last week, the for­mer PM chal­lenged the re­sult of the gen­er­al elec­tion and asked that it be de­clared null and void.She al­so chas­tised the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) for what she claimed was a sud­den change in the reg­u­la­tions, re­sult­ing in the en­tire process be­ing sab­o­taged.

In a let­ter at the time, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had de­scribed the PNM's 23-18 vic­to­ry as un­fair and blamed the ex­tend­ed hour grant­ed to cit­i­zens in Trinidad as play­ing a key role in what she main­tained was a bi­ased de­ci­sion which brought a re­sult against her par­ty.