Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's com­ment about ap­ply­ing con­di­tions to re­lief aid to neigh­bour­ing Caribbean is­lands af­fect­ed by Tomas con­tin­ues to at­tract at­ten­tion. The is­sue has been tak­en up in Time mag­a­zine in its News­Feed sec­tion, a com­pi­la­tion of sto­ries which have gone vi­ral on the Web. In a re­port head­lined, "She Said What? Trinidad PM Takes Heat Over Re­lief Aid Com­ment," Madi­son Gray writes: "US politi­cians aren't the on­ly ones who suf­fer from foot-in-mouth dis­ease. As it turns out, democ­ra­cy af­fords elect­ed of­fi­cials from all over the world the right to have em­bar­rass­ing gaffes.

"Case in point: Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who in May was elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter of the Caribbean na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, said the twin is­land na­tion stood ready to give aid to na­tions af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Tomas, but her coun­try need­ed to reap some ben­e­fit from it. "'So if we are giv­ing as­sis­tance with hous­ing for ex­am­ple...then we may be able to use Trinidad and To­ba­go builders and com­pa­nies, so that what­ev­er mon­ey or as­sis­tance is giv­en (re­dounds) back in some mea­sure to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,' a Trinidad news­pa­per re­port­ed. "Need­less to say, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's com­ments lit up the glob­al bl­o­gos­phere, with crit­i­cisms and calls for boy­cotts on goods made in Trinidad. Oth­ers through­out the Caribbean crit­i­cised the prime min­is­ter and de­mand­ed an apol­o­gy. All this comes as Hur­ri­cane Tomas makes land­fall in Haiti and Cu­ba.

"Now, News­Feed has ac­tu­al­ly been to Trinidad a few times and learned that Trinidad it­self, a ma­jor oil and gas ex­porter, is among the wealth­i­est of the Caribbean is­lands, and is well known for its an­nu­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion. "It sits in a ge­o­graph­ic area just off the coast of Venezuela, where it is not typ­i­cal­ly af­fect­ed by the weath­er pat­terns that have dev­as­tat­ed oth­er is­lands. "But Trinidad is not im­mune from nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. The coun­try sits on the same fault line whose earth­quake se­vere­ly dam­aged Port-au-Prince, Haiti, ear­li­er this year, mean­ing oth­ers are ready to take the prime min­is­ter to task over her com­ments. "Among those who find the prime min­is­ter's 'what's-in-it-for-us' at­ti­tude bizarre is Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley, who said in a state­ment that he 'to­tal­ly re­jects this back­ward, colo­nial pol­i­cy.'"