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“[…] To the ‘UNC family’ she offers the old tired hymn: lagoons, cane fields, salt and rice, ponds and springs—the ancestral ledger of one community, recited as if the rest of the country were furniture.
“To the country she offers a different sermon: the British left you a prosperous, functioning state; grow up; stop blaming the colony; the failures after 1962 are yours.
“Same weekend. Same leader. Two scripts. That is not candour. That is contempt for the intelligence of the people who just put her back in office…”
The following Letter to the Editor, which criticised Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s Independence Day messaging, was submitted to Wired868 by former UNC minister Dr Devant Maharaj:
Photo: UNC.
Kamla did not address a nation but instead it appears that she is managing two audiences and hoping they never compare notes.
To the “UNC family” she offers the old tired hymn: lagoons, cane fields, salt and rice, ponds and springs — the ancestral ledger of one community, recited as if the rest of the country were furniture.
To the country she offers a different sermon: the British left you a prosperous, functioning state; grow up; stop blaming the colony; the failures after 1962 are yours.
Same weekend. Same leader. Two scripts. That is not candour. That is contempt for the intelligence of the people who just put her back in office.
And she needed those people. La Brea and Point Fortin did not fall because the traditional yellow machine suddenly discovered oilfield loyalty.
They fell because labour men, OWTU votes, and PNM refugees walked across a line she spent a decade pretending did not exist. San Fernando West, Tunapuna, Toco/Sangre Grande, La Horquetta/Talparo, Aranguez/St Joseph—those seats were not gifts from the “UNC family”.
Photo: UNC.
So ask the only question that matters: why was this cane-and-lagoon homily locked in a drawer until the last non-UNC ballot was counted? Because she knew what it sounded like.
After the count, the mask came off—the naked face of a partisian leader unmasked. I wonder how all those Africans who voted for the UNC feel this Independence Day.
Then there is the boast she cannot stop repeating—that she saved the UNC from weak men, that party leadership must never fall into the hands of weak men and women, that she spent 15 years purging caste, dynasty, nepotism and the one-man show.
Photo: UNC.
Look at what the purge actually selected for. The men, like Jack Warner, Ganga Singh, Vasant Barath, Kevin Ramnarine, Suruj Rambachan, Bhoe Tewarie, Fuad Khan, Prakash Ramadhar, etc who had an independent spine, a personal base, a willingness to offer a different perspective, were expelled, frozen, or taught the cost of standing upright.
What remains is not a meritocracy. It is a court of Kamla where the ambition is to be mediocre at best. The lowest common denominator, is now at the helm of the UNC.
The test for advancement is no longer competence or courage; it is the capacity to remain useful without becoming dangerous. That is how inmates end up running the asylum: the warden removes everyone who might lock the door from the other side.
Photo: UNC.
A party that congratulates itself for purging “weak men” and then staffs its front bench with those who will not say no has not been saved. It has been hollowed out.
Strength, in her vocabulary, means loyalty to her. Independence, in her practice, means exile. So when she warns that weak men must never lead the UNC, believe her—and then look at who is left: Ravi Ratiram, Khadijah Ameen, Phillip Alexander, Anil Roberts, Neil Gosine, Nicolas Morris, Barry Padarath, etc.
The warning was not a principle. It was a job description for everyone else.
Photo: UNC.
Independence of Trinidad and Tobago was not a receipt handed across a table in 1962 by a benevolent British colonizer.
It was extracted against brutal British power: slavery and its afterlife; indenture that treated Indians as disposable labour and refused to recognise their marriages for generations; Hosay cut down by rifle fire in San Fernando; Canboulay beaten out of Carnival; Shouter Baptists outlawed as a nuisance for thirty-four years; Butler’s 1937 rising answered with warships and bodies.
That history is not an excuse. It is the reason there was anything to inherit. To praise the “foundation” while erasing the extraction, the racial sorting, and the bans is not maturity. It is amnesia in the service of a convenient lecture.
(Copyright Stefan Falke.)
Kamla spent the campaign collecting votes in places her “UNC family” message would have insulted. She spent the years before that emptying the party of anyone strong enough to restrain her. She spent this Independence weekend telling one story to the base and another to the country.
See her plainly: not the mother of the nation, not the saviour of a party, but a politician who uses ancestral pain as a private language, colonial revision as a public alibi, and “weak men” as the name she gives to anyone she has not yet broken.
The asylum is open. The inmates have the keys. And the country is expected to salute.
(The following Independence Day messages were posted on the Facebook pages of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the United National Congress on Sunday 30 August and Monday 31 August.)
Message of Prime Minister the Honourable Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar, SC, MP on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the Independence of Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday 30 August 2026:
Tomorrow, Trinidad and Tobago celebrates our 64th anniversary of becoming Independent of the British Empire.
The talks lasted about two weeks and resulted in Independence for Trinidad and Tobago.
Copyright: AP Photo/ Staff/ Laurence Harris.
We must confront our post-independence history with honesty and acknowledge that we should have done much better over the past 64 years considering the strong foundation left by the British.
When our country emerged from British colonial rule to determine our own destiny, we had a higher per capita income level than Japan, Chile, Greece, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore, Portugal, Mexico, Turkey, Iraq, Brazil, Malaysia, Iran, Morocco, Taiwan, and China. All of these countries have now superseded us.
At that time we had a well-organized legal and governance structure, an advanced oil exploration and refining industry, an expansive agricultural industry with large cocoa, coffee, rice, citrus and sugar plantations, a developed railway system, a low crime rate and a very clean environment.
The fact is that the British left us a very prosperous functioning country in 1962.
After 64 years, it’s time we grow up and stop blaming our problems on our colonial past to escape accepting responsibility for bad decisions we made post-independence that have resulted in negative consequences for ourselves and our nation.
We all fall at times, we all repeatedly, knowingly make regrettable choices and we all foolishly take shortcuts that are not in our best interest to chase quick success.
Whatever our shortcomings, biases and grievances, we share one citizenship, one homeland and a collective duty to put Trinidad and Tobago first.
Photo: UNC.
We have to move forward with conviction and accountability to be able to bequeath to future generations a stronger, safer and more prosperous nation.
May Almighty God bless our nation.
Editor’s Note: The Prime Minister’s assertion regarding Trinidad and Tobago’s per capita income is incorrect, as the two-island republic actually enjoys a superior per capita income than roughly of the countries it was compared to in her Independence Day message.
Photo: UNC.
64th Independence Day message to the UNC family from UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Monday 31 August:
On our 64th anniversary of Independence, I write this message to specially acknowledge the most important people to me, the UNC family. I say thank you for the honour of leading our great party and country. I love each one of you, and I will love you all till the day I leave this life.
Today we acknowledge our mothers and fathers, grandparents and great-grandparents, and the suffering they endured in the lagoons, cane fields, and oilfields to give us a fighting chance pre- and post-independence.
We remember that our membership was born of people mired in poverty who, at times, survived on salt and rice, while drinking water from ponds and springs. Sometimes eating one meal a day to make the sacrifices needed to educate us in cowsheds and church annexes.
They fetched water in box carts and bull carts, used flambeaus for light, had no healthcare, possessed one outfit of clothes for going out, and usually had to walk or ride a bicycle for miles in the sun or rain to reach any government service.
They were objects of ridicule and hatred in this country for years under the PNM, post-1962 Independence.
Photo: UNC.
Yet over 64 years, they fought to educate their children to ensure that we owned our rightful place as equal citizens in this country.
We must keep working for our sons and daughters to qualify themselves to have better lives than ours. We must never stop learning, working and improving. You must strive to be owners and entrepreneurs, not simply satisfied with being workers or living on state welfare.
We must also have love in our communities. Greet the day with love, for it is the most valuable key to success.
Photo: UNC.
Never allow your heart to become small and bitter; rather, share it, and it will grow and warm everyone and everything around you. While I encourage you to live with love in your heart, I also say do not crawl on your belly for anyone.
It’s either peace or total war, nothing in between.
More than just a party, the UNC is a belief system rooted in the spirit of resistance, freedom, equality, justice, unity, hope, and faith. It is a spirit that lived in our poor, marginalised ancestors, yet who never allowed themselves to fall by the wayside.
(via UNC.)
This is why the leadership of our party must never fall into the hands of weak men and women; finesse and diplomacy must be backed up with steeliness and savagery when required to defend the UNC membership.
A UNC leader must never allow our party to be hijacked by the local drug mafia and the fake eat-a-food elite as happened to the PNM.
I am honoured to be your leader, and I am committed to working tirelessly to ensure your voices are heard and our nation moves in the right direction.
I am Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Proud leader of the United National Congress.
Happy Independence Day, UNC.
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