KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she will not apol­o­gise for send­ing Re­pub­lic Day greet­ings to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers, de­fend­ing the move amid crit­i­cism that she had is­sued a sep­a­rate mes­sage to par­ty mem­bers on yet an­oth­er na­tion­al hol­i­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day re­ject­ed claims that she had pri­ori­tised the UNC over the wider pop­u­la­tion, not­ing that she had first is­sued a Re­pub­lic Day mes­sage to the na­tion be­fore ad­dress­ing the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship in an­oth­er.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the Na­tion­al Awards Cer­e­mo­ny at Queen’s Hall, Port-of-Spain, last evening Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed the crit­i­cism.

“That is to­tal­ly fake news. We sent out a Re­pub­lic Day mes­sage to the en­tire coun­try. The coun­try has a birth­day, I guess you have a birth­day too, so what is wrong with send­ing greet­ings to you if your birth­day and Re­pub­lic Day are at the same time? What is wrong?” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that the UNC was al­so a fam­i­ly and there was noth­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate about recog­nis­ing its mem­bers on spe­cial oc­ca­sions.

“What we do, we have a fam­i­ly. We have a UNC fam­i­ly and we should not ig­nore them on spe­cial days. So it is fake news that I did not send Re­pub­lic Day greet­ings to all of Trinidad and To­ba­go. That was done first. I make no apolo­gies for send­ing greet­ings to the UNC fam­i­ly,” she added.

The mes­sage to UNC mem­bers was sep­a­rate from her na­tion­al Re­pub­lic Day state­ment as the coun­try cel­e­brat­ed the 50th an­niver­sary of be­com­ing a re­pub­lic.

The Prime Min­is­ter faced sim­i­lar crit­i­cism last month when she re­leased a sep­a­rate In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage to UNC sup­port­ers in ad­di­tion to her na­tion­al ad­dress. She adopt­ed the same ap­proach for Re­pub­lic Day, is­su­ing one state­ment to the coun­try and an­oth­er specif­i­cal­ly for UNC mem­bers.

In her ad­dress to par­ty sup­port­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the UNC as “no longer in re­treat” and said it was “dom­i­nant­ly march­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a new or­der.”

She said the par­ty had been un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, vil­i­fied and dis­re­spect­ed over the years, but de­clared those days were over. She al­so vowed that the UNC would “ruth­less­ly and fe­ro­cious­ly de­fend” its be­liefs, poli­cies and mem­bers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­flect­ed on T&T’s 50 years as a Re­pub­lic, ar­gu­ing that decades of mis­gov­er­nance had con­tributed to so­cial de­cline, eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty and missed op­por­tu­ni­ties.

She urged UNC mem­bers to pur­sue ed­u­ca­tion, self-im­prove­ment and suc­cess, en­cour­ag­ing them to be “dan­ger­ous, ruth­less, ag­gres­sive, and in­tel­li­gent” and nev­er al­low oth­ers to de­ter­mine their fu­ture or that of their chil­dren.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so called on sup­port­ers to take pride in their an­ces­tral her­itage, de­clar­ing: “WE ARE UNC AND PROUD.”