Ke­jan Haynes

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar wast­ed no time out­lin­ing her gov­ern­ment’s leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties, nam­ing the re­peal of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) Act as her first or­der of busi­ness mere min­utes af­ter her Cab­i­net was sworn in on Sat­ur­day.

“Our first part of busi­ness is boots on the ground and get to work,” the prime min­is­ter de­clared, stand­ing be­fore a full com­ple­ment of new­ly ap­point­ed min­is­ters. “I want to thank all for the good fight that we fought… but first and fore­most, giv­en our new­ly mint­ed—not for the first time—but At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, our leg­isla­tive agen­da will kick in as we move to open our Par­lia­ment. We want to re­peal the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Act.”

Sad­dam Ho­sein, now Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, will work close­ly with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to spear­head this ef­fort.

Flanked by her new team, Per­sad-Bisses­sar out­lined a ro­bust list of leg­isla­tive goals, in­clud­ing the swift im­ple­men­ta­tion of stand-your-ground laws, home in­va­sion laws, and reg­u­la­to­ry changes to fa­cil­i­tate the grant­i­ng of firearms to “law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

“These are low-hang­ing fruit,” she said. “They will not re­quire too much mon­ey, but it’s a will—and the fact that we re­al­ly want to bring these things in­to place.”

Turn­ing to the econ­o­my, she tasked her Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, with im­me­di­ate­ly as­sess­ing the coun­try’s fis­cal stand­ing. “We need to find out what is the state of the Trea­sury,” she said. “We must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. I can on­ly do that by Mon­day, when my Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and my Min­is­ter of Plan­ning put their heads to­geth­er. We have to find mon­ey and we have to make mon­ey. We have to work hard.”

To­ba­go al­so fea­tured promi­nent­ly in her plans, with the prime min­is­ter promis­ing a re­newed leg­isla­tive part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. “To­ba­go has tremen­dous re­sources… the law for ten years has stalled, maybe even more,” she said. “We’ll be look­ing at a mod­el to­geth­er that tru­ly re­flects what we sing in our an­them: side by side we stand, Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

On en­er­gy pol­i­cy, Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed to the sec­tor as a con­tin­ued an­chor of the econ­o­my and an­nounced bold plans for re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

“My Min­is­ter of En­er­gy has been man­dat­ed from day one—let’s ex­plore,” she said, re­fer­ring to Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. “Let us ex­plore the of­fer be­ing made by Guyana to bring gas to Trinidad and To­ba­go… Suri­name is al­so en­er­gy-pro­duc­ing, and again, we can part­ner with them.”

But she saved her biggest sur­prise for last: “I in­tend to send my Min­is­ter of En­er­gy to Grena­da, be­cause I’m be­ing told that Grena­da off­shore has more gas and oil than the Drag­on Field. Shall we ex­plore that? Let us ex­plore that.”

The prime min­is­ter made clear her ex­pec­ta­tions of her Cab­i­net. “Some we will tell you, they will get bouff when it doesn’t hap­pen—in Tri­ni lan­guage, you’ll get bouff,” she said, prompt­ing laugh­ter.