http://guardian.co.tt/news/2012-12-02/kamla-has-given-up%E2%80%94vernaKamla has given up—Verna
Published:
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Dr Sheila Rampersad
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Former minister of Gender, Youth and Child Development Verna St Rose-Greaves.
Public Affairs Editor
There are elements within the Cabinet of the People’s Partnership Government that are trying to engineer a national crisis in order to sideline Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and “slip in and do what they want.” And what are perceived to be off-the-cuff statements from members of the coalition Government are in fact calculated to create division and unrest.
In a revelatory, exclusive interview with the T&T Guardian last Wednesday, former government minister Verna St Rose-Greaves expressed deep concern for Persad-Bissessar and her ability to perform her prime ministerial functions. “I listen to what is being said—and don’t be fooled: these are no off-the-cuff statements. They want the place to mash up.
“There is a quiet hunger strike and you bring in your people to create confusion. I’m seeing people pushing for fire. They want this place to explode and I hope the country smarter than that because there will be no winners. “I truly believe they think the Prime Minister cannot cope with a national crisis and that if a crisis should arise, it would provide them with the opportunity, and this is why I am pushing for her to stand up and step up.”
(This is the first in a two-part series.) St Rose-Greaves served as a United National Congress (UNC) Opposition Senator from March 2 to April 8, 2010, when Parliament was dissolved in preparation for the May 24 general election. She campaigned for the PP coalition in the run-up to the general election and on June 27, 2011, 13 months after the PP won the election and formed the Government, was appointed a government Senator.
She served as a member of Cabinet as Minister of Gender, Youth and Child Development until June 24, 2012, when she was dismissed from Cabinet in favour of former San Fernando mayor Marlene Coudray during a Cabinet reshuffle. No explanation was given for her removal.
Saying that the country cannot continue on its current path, the often outspoken women’s movement and children’s rights activist said she feels the time has come for her to speak up for the good of the country. “The Prime Minister is loved, she is loved. And I think if people understand the promise of what is possible, if she is allowed to function in the way that is required of a prime minister, I think there are sufficient people willing to help and support her.”
It might be too late for the Government as it is currently configured, she said, but she does not think it is too late for Persad-Bissessar to leave a better legacy. “I don’t want her to go down, our first woman leader, in this way. She can still salvage her legacy.
“I am suggesting that if she has to get rid of certain people, that she does that. If she has to reconfigure how things get done, do that. She has to assert her position and have a better handle on how and what her ministers are doing.”
Asked whether she feared for the Prime Minister, St Rose-Greaves said she had always been concerned.
“When you are dealing with people who are desperate, you don’t put anything past them. Things happen in this country now that we never thought could happen. There are desperate elements and a kind of callousness that is bothersome. When you have people who are functioning in fear and in anger, that is a deadly combination. I am concerned. I have always been concerned.”
Kamla needs her sister
Insisting she was not speaking from “a place of anger and bitterness and spite,” St Rose-Greaves said she was interested in finding a solution to the crisis of governance, a crisis which she analysed as emanating both from a tight wall of personalities around the Prime Minister and from flawed processes of governance.
“There is a wall around her who keep making interventions when people approach with good sense and who have her best interest at heart. You make interventions to individuals and they say, ‘Hush, don’t go there. If you raise those issues, you are out of here.’”
Asked whether she had attempted to penetrate that wall, she responded, “Yes, I have attempted to do this, and you are warned. There was a move for me not to be too close to her, and she, too, grew afraid of appearing to be close to me.”
Unlike the many who demanded the removal of Vidwatie Newton, Persad-Bissessar’s sister, as the Prime Minister’s informal personal assistant and travel companion, St Rose-Greaves said the presence of Newton was good for the Prime Minister, and her removal was orchestrated by members of the Cabinet who wanted uninterrupted access to the Prime Minister.
“I was very happy the Prime Minister’s sister had come to be with her. I had advised if there were two or three sisters, they should all come, because I saw very early she (the Prime Minister) needed protection. Everybody had access to her and would go to her and pressure her to get what they wanted.
“All the drama about the money spent on the sister—people around her fostered that for their own purposes. There were people who did not want her sister there. “But it was important for her sister to be there, someone she could trust who had her best interest at heart, and who would stand up with her, and they have undermined that. The Prime Minister’s family needs more support than they have been getting.”
Flawed processes
On the matter of flawed processes of governance, St Rose-Greaves explained, “Collective responsibility suggests that we have shared decisions, we have discussions, collective decision-making, and then I am to be held responsible in that context.
“But there are no minutes of Cabinet in terms of who said what, who supported what decision. Those things are not in Cabinet minutes. So, for example, the decision about Clause 34, no one knows who would have objected to it, who were present at the discussion, whether it was discussed or not. When it was said there was a death threat against the Prime Minister, was that ever brought to the Cabinet?
“You don’t even know what is a majority position. So the Prime Minister or little groupings would say something and it comes out as a majority position, when you didn’t even know—but you are held responsible. We have to deal with that.” Saying the country has to decide on the question of leadership, she elaborated on a point she made in a CNC3 interview last week when she asked: Who is in charge?
“The Prime Minister has been in politics for many years, so we can’t say she doesn’t have strengths and skills. To have survived in that patriarchal political scenario, she must have had lots of strengths and lots of skills. She is now in leadership. “How then does it seem to the population that she has handed over, she has pulled back?”
Who’s really in charge?
Asked to answer her own question about who is in charge, St Rose-Greaves said it varied. “It depends on what is being discussed, whether we’re discussing a particular piece of legislation, buying over companies, or moving things out of Port-of-Spain beyond the Caroni River. At any time it’s a group of people who is in charge.
“I know it appears the Prime Minister is not in charge, and that much I think there is a general agreement on. She is not in charge. “She says she is not afraid but when I look at her, she is afraid, and I can’t say who or what she is afraid of, but I am picking up a lot of fear. Is she afraid of the people she is governing, of those around her?
“The Prime Minister has the capacity to make sound decisions, but whether she follows through on those decisions is another matter. Who are the people who, when the decision is not in their favour, go to her and use what they perceive to be her weakness to make her do what they want her to do?
“She does not appear to be in charge, and if that is in fact so, I am suggesting that she reasserts her authority, she step up and take back her power, and one of the ways to retake your power is to remove any secrecy and step up. She has to step back into her power. “She knows she must look after the women and children of this country. She was given a gift of a special opportunity to do something for this country.”
In 2010, she said, none of the senior male ministers currently in the Government could have won the election without Persad-Bissessar, yet she appears to have given up control of her office. “They could have had (no matter) what combination of parties—there was no way they were going to win that election without her. People voted for her.
“On this whole question of woman leadership and change, people bought into that, and that is because of the work the women’s movement has done over years in opening people’s minds and giving them the possibility of something better and something different.
“And it is painful to me that in such short shrift, they have squandered all that goodwill and the Prime Minister has just given up. If you watch all the things that have happened since, from Reshmi to Section 34, every time something happens, she goes silent and she allows these ministers to get up and make vicarious statements and say all kinds of things. And then, after people insist, she would talk, but she takes her cue from what these people are saying.
“We cannot go on like that. They will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
