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Friday, May 9, 2025

Kamla tells voters: You will never have a leader who loves you more than I do

by

24 days ago
20250416
Political Leader of the UNC Kamla Persad-Bissessar addressing the UNC meeting in Penal on Monday.

Political Leader of the UNC Kamla Persad-Bissessar addressing the UNC meeting in Penal on Monday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fired back at Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s crit­i­cism of her spend­ing plans, in­sist­ing that a UNC gov­ern­ment will fund its ini­tia­tives by cut­ting back on gov­ern­ment waste and pri­ori­tis­ing poor peo­ple.

Speak­ing to an en­er­gized crowd at Bhups­ingh Park, Pe­nal — the heart of the Siparia con­stituen­cy — Per­sad-Bisses­sar again out­lined a sweep­ing list of so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and in­fra­struc­ture re­forms the UNC plans to de­liv­er if elect­ed in­to of­fice.

With just two weeks un­til vot­ers go to the polls on April 28, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said; “You have had lead­ers be­fore me, you will have lead­ers af­ter me, but you will nev­er have a leader who loves you more than I do.”

De­tail­ing her plans, should the UNC win the elec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “We will redi­rect that PNM eat-a-food mon­ey to sup­port land for the land­less, to repave our roads, to im­ple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive traf­fic al­le­vi­a­tion plan and to sup­ply wa­ter in your taps."

She said young fam­i­lies could not af­ford a house or ever earn enough to pur­chase land and this keeps them in a cy­cle of pover­ty.

Her re­marks came days af­ter Young ques­tioned where the UNC would find the funds to sup­port such a broad agen­da. The Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused the UNC leader of mak­ing emp­ty promis­es with­out ex­plain­ing how the ini­tia­tives would be fi­nanced.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar hit back say­ing, “There is mon­ey to pay work­ers; the gov­ern­ment has mon­ey for every­thing else be­sides pay­ing work­ers.”

She ac­cused the cur­rent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of squan­der­ing over $530 bil­lion with lit­tle to show for it, claim­ing that the coun­try’s wealth has been fun­nelled in­to priv­i­lege and pa­tron­age.

At the meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar out­lined sev­er­al ma­jor projects and poli­cies the UNC would im­ple­ment, in­clud­ing the re­open­ing of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and low­er­ing fu­el prices. Claim­ing the PNM had dec­i­mat­ed the south land when it shut down the re­fin­ery, she ac­cused Young of try­ing to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion in­to be­liev­ing that the PNM did not shut down the re­fin­ery back in 2018.

Speak­ing about the high cost of liv­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there would be no Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) on 7,000 food items should she take of­fice as poor peo­ple, she said, were strug­gling to feed their fam­i­lies.

She said there would be free lap­tops for sec­ondary school stu­dents and free tablets for pri­ma­ry school pupils so they could have the best op­por­tu­ni­ty.

And to stop school bul­ly­ing she promised ex­pand­ed Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, uni­ver­sal free kinder­garten ed­u­ca­tion and po­lice of­fi­cers pa­trolling in­side schools to pro­tect staff and stu­dents.

She al­so vowed to help sick chil­dren by ex­pand­ing the Chil­dren’s Life Fund. To boost busi­ness, she said she would low­er for­eign used car prices and put a stop to abu­sive traf­fic fines.

"We have an eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion plan in­clud­ing growth poles and an East-West Cor­ri­dor man­u­fac­tur­ing hub. We will put af­ford­able hous­ing and eas­i­er ac­cess to fi­nan­cial ser­vices," she ex­plained.

And for those fac­ing the brunt of crime, Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised that le­gal firearms would be giv­en to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and all off-du­ty po­lice and prison of­fi­cers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so promised to rein­tro­duce and ex­pand GATE fund­ing, re­store school feed­ing and trans­port pro­grammes, and im­ple­ment “stand your ground” and “home in­va­sion” laws.

Fram­ing the up­com­ing elec­tion as a turn­ing point, she de­clared, “This elec­tion is where we stand to­geth­er, unit­ed, fo­cused, strong, bold and con­fi­dent.”

De­spite crit­i­cisms, Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that the UNC has both a cred­i­ble plan and the will to ex­e­cute it. “The UNC sup­ports cre­at­ing thou­sands of new jobs, as we did from 2010 to 2015,” she re­mind­ed sup­port­ers.


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