Fran­cis Joseph

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had been ac­cus­tomed to walk­ing the streets of the coun­try alone but that changed over the last four months when she rose from be­ing an or­di­nary Siparia Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to the Prime Min­is­ter-elect of T&T.

When she con­test­ed the post of po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in Jan­u­ary, she had one se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial by the name of Roland Hall, a coun­cil­lor at­tached to the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Af­ter she won the post in the Jan­u­ary 24 in­ter­nal elec­tions, she was snapped up by Aaron Hen­ry and his se­cu­ri­ty firm, SWAT. Wher­ev­er she went, SWAT was there to pro­tect and guide her. She then be­came Op­po­si­tion Leader on Feb­ru­ary 24. When for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning an­nounced the gen­er­al elec­tion date on April 8, se­cu­ri­ty around Per­sad-Bisses­sar dou­bled as she en­tered talks with oth­er par­ties to form the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. Dur­ing the run-up to the elec­tions, there was a re­port that a $5 mil­lion hit was put out on the UNC leader.

Sev­en se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed States were hired to as­sist in pro­tect­ing her as the race to the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice heat­ed up. Sup­port­ers of the UNC no­ticed strange se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, with ra­dios wired to their ears, lurk­ing around Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The US of­fi­cials, to­geth­er with high­ly-trained of­fi­cers of SWAT, worked with Per­sad-Bisses­sar right up to elec­tion night on Mon­day. But from the mo­ment she was de­clared win­ner of the Siparia seat and the leader with the ma­jor­i­ty of seats in the elec­tion, she was grabbed up from her Pe­nal con­stituen­cy of­fice by mem­bers of the Po­lice Spe­cial Branch. The US of­fi­cers and SWAT had to take a back seat as the Spe­cial Branch en­forced their au­thor­i­ty on the Prime Min­is­ter-elect. At Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, po­lice dogs searched for ex­plo­sive de­vices among the large crowd at the vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tions.

Two bomb squad of­fi­cers al­so checked the venue and se­cured the stage area be­fore Per­sad-Bisses­sar mount­ed it for her vic­to­ry speech. The Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers, some of whom guard­ed Man­ning on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, took charge from the mo­ment Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­proached Rien­zi Com­plex. The UNC leader dis­em­barked from the car and was im­me­di­ate­ly sur­round­ed by some 25 po­lice of­fi­cers from Spe­cial Branch, the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB), and the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials. Be­cause of the heavy traf­fic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­com­pa­nied by fam­i­ly and friends, was es­cort­ed in­to Rien­zi Com­plex where the crowd cheered. Along the way, she had to pause and breathe as she was lit­er­al­ly dragged along to a room where she re­mained for some­time be­fore her ap­pear­ance on the stage.

When she got on stage, the se­cu­ri­ty was even tighter and plain­clothes of­fi­cers sur­round­ed the stage as the Prime Min­is­ter-elect de­liv­ered her vic­to­ry speech. To­day, when she is sworn in as the new Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar knows she will not be al­lowed to go any­where alone again, as long as she is the leader of the T&T Gov­ern­ment.