Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

New po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has vowed to pro­tect the free­dom of the me­dia, say­ing it was a fun­da­men­tal pil­lar of true democ­ra­cy. Speak­ing to hun­dreds of sup­port­ers af­ter be­ing sworn in at Rien­zi Com­plex in Cou­va yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the me­dia were in­stru­men­tal in keep­ing the is­sues of the day alive, dur­ing the heat­ed UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions. Dressed in a pink suit and shak­ing the hands of the par­ty's new chair­man, Jack Warn­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar greet­ed sup­port­ers as they gath­ered around her im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter she ex­it­ed her car. Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal at­tend­ed the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny. He was sworn in as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

Mooni­lal shook hands with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, but re­fused to com­ment about whether he was sup­port­ing her for the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader. Per­sad-Bisses­sar told jour­nal­ists: "You are the guardians of democ­ra­cy and you have nev­er ab­di­cat­ed your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple and the coun­try. "You have my word that I will at all times de­fend your rights to free­dom, be­cause with­out a free me­dia our democ­ra­cy will be de­formed," she added. She said free speech al­lowed for a mar­ket place of ideas in which cit­i­zens would be able to judge for them­selves about what was right and what was wrong. "We must nev­er al­low or­gan­i­sa­tion­al pres­sures to get in the way of that free­dom," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

"You car­ry a great bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to this na­tion to re­port with­out fear or favour to en­sure that to­day's mi­nori­ties are not pre­vent­ed from be­com­ing to­mor­row's ma­jor­i­ty." She al­so told sup­port­ers that the new UNC ex­ec­u­tive would em­brace all cul­tures, creed and race, and would work to­geth­er to de­feat the PNM. "We will de­vel­op a pol­i­cy where politi­cians will lis­ten care­ful­ly to what is im­por­tant to the peo­ple of T&T," she said. Af­ter her ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar cheered the au­di­ence to sing "Hap­py Birth­day" to Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er, who cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day on Tues­day. Warn­er said the best birth­day gift he could have ever re­ceived in his life was to see the peo­ple vote for change in the UNC by mak­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar the po­lit­i­cal leader.

?Con­sti­tu­tion

?Sec­tion 83 of T&T's Con­sti­tu­tion states that the Pres­i­dent can ap­point the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, based on his judg­ment about who com­mand­ed the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of Op­po­si­tion mem­bers. Four Op­po­si­tion MPs have pledged their sup­port to Per­sad-Bisses­sar. They are Warn­er (Ch­agua­nas West), Win­ston Pe­ters (Ma­yaro), Har­ry Par­tap (Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la) and Nizam Baksh (Na­pari­ma).