Gail Alexan­der

A war of words de­vel­oped be­tween Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar sniped at the Min­istry of Health’s mea­sures on the lat­est spike in COVID-19 in­fec­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was quite sur­prised the Health Min­istry had not yet com­pre­hen­sive­ly an­nounced any new and ur­gent con­tin­gency mea­sures to pro­tect cit­i­zens from the new wave of in­fec­tions.

In a Face­book state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I ex­pect (the Min­istry) will see the need to do this as soon as pos­si­ble, in the in­ter­est of keep­ing our cit­i­zens safe.

“Giv­en their colos­sal fail­ure in im­ple­ment­ing an ad­e­quate test­ing pol­i­cy, I es­pe­cial­ly hope that they move to swift­ly en­sure that they un­der­take a se­ries of rapid, wide­spread test­ing of the pop­u­la­tion, to off­set what is clear­ly an im­pend­ing cri­sis.’’

She not­ed that the min­istry had an­nounced “...A whop­ping 78 new cas­es of COVID-19. This is cause for con­cern and re­quires se­ri­ous pre­cau­tions to curb this dead­ly virus.”

“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant, giv­en the fact that our al­ready fail­ing pub­lic health care sys­tem will be put un­der fur­ther stress and there­fore can­not ef­fec­tive­ly deal with any COVID cri­sis at this time. The lives of cit­i­zens are there­fore at se­ri­ous risk,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote.

She al­so told sup­port­ers, “While you en­joy your week­end, please be mind­ful of this very se­ri­ous pub­lic health threat and obey all pub­lic health guide­lines and reg­u­la­tions at all costs. We must all do our very best to pro­tect our­selves. Please re­mem­ber to wear your masks, sani­tise and en­sure you en­gage in prop­er, stern so­cial and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing at all costs.”

Her state­ment was ac­com­pa­nied by a pre­vi­ous pho­to of her in a red dress wear­ing a mask.

But PNM Com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing im­me­di­ate­ly slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cisms over the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the pan­dem­ic.

“She is hold­ing T&T hostage to the UNC’s re­count of elec­tion re­sults, which has de­layed the ap­point­ment of a new Gov­ern­ment to even meet in Cab­i­net, yet she talks about a ‘cri­sis’?’’ Leza­ma-Lee Sing said.

“PNM chair­man Colm Im­bert on Thurs­day ex­plained that un­til the re­counts de­mand­ed by UNC are com­plet­ed and the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion pub­lish­es the re­sults, the new gov­ern­ment can­not take of­fice. Though the Prime Min­is­ter and min­is­ters of 2015/2020 re­main in place un­til a new gov­ern­ment is ap­point­ed, Cab­i­net de­ci­sions and oth­er things that are need­ed for this new term can’t be made.”

She added, “SEA ex­ams for 20,000 stu­dents are due next week. The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry needs to en­sure ex­ams are ex­e­cut­ed as best as pos­si­ble giv­en the cir­cum­stances - but Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar isn’t al­low­ing the min­istry or oth­ers to op­er­ate.

“Bud­get prepa­ra­tions have to be done, In­de­pen­dence and Re­pub­lic Day prepa­ra­tions are due, yet our in­de­pen­dence is be­ing sti­fled by UNC. Her strat­e­gy to de­lay things and hold T&T hostage to high­light her pro­file—and her strug­gle for sur­vival—is pure self­ish­ness.”

Leza­ma-Lee Sing said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim about a ‘fail­ing’ health sys­tem was al­so an in­sult to hard-work­ing health work­ers and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram who’ve worked dili­gent­ly since Jan­u­ary on the COVID is­sue.

“She (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) has the au­dac­i­ty to try to den­i­grate the sys­tem af­ter she said sun­light killed COVID, she held a mass meet­ing in El So­cor­ro on the Sat­ur­day be­fore elec­tion, she was con­sis­tent­ly seen cam­paign­ing with­out a mask and had to be urged by ex­perts and sup­port­ers to wear one—plus she re­fused to warn UNC sup­port­ers not to gath­er to ob­serve re­sults,” Leza­ma-Lee Sing said.

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was re­flect­ed in elec­tion out­comes. Her ‘ad­vice’ comes too late. She needs to stop hold­ing T&T back and let life move on.”