Kamla 2.0

WHEN Kamla Persad-Bissessar was inaugurated as Prime Minister in 2010, it was a historic, yet straightforward affair. She turned up at Knowsley, swore an oath on the Bhagavad Gita, and, in a memorable gesture, donned boots to visit citizens affected by floods. But the leader who turned up to President’s House, St Ann’s, on May 1 was a different version of the original software.

Kamla 2.0 is older and wiser. She is battle-worn. For the last ten years, she has been the head of the UNC and, as Opposition Leader, in charge of the government-in-waiting. Yet, Ms Persad-Bissessar is, by her retelling, an underdog.

“I know how it feels to be forgotten,” she says, “I know how it feels to be humiliated and written off.”

But such a Trumpian grievance is strange coming from her. For, nobody in the last decade was at risk of forgetting the UNC leader, whose campaign of holding the PNM accountable never ceased. So much so, it became a hallmark of the Dr Keith Rowley administration to blame the opposition for everything: from the failure of bail legislation to inflaming tensions with Venezuela.

UNC dissenters who disliked her leadership were rendered pariahs and purged, even though internal elections showed they had some support.

Swearing her oath this time on the Constitution – which she will shape because of her super majority – Ms Persad-Bissessar preaches a doctrine of equality. Party affiliation does not matter; she serves all “real people.” Yet, she has appointed one of the most divisive attorneys general ever.

There is no consensus on John Jeremie. He has leapfrogged over UNC members with eminent legal qualifications. There was no attempt to explain the selection of this highly controversial figure beyond a trite statement: “He is a brilliant person.”

But what will Mr Jeremie’s position on the Piarco cases be? The extradition involving Jack Warner? Will he implement the “swift and brutal” retribution the new PM promises on the corrupt? Absent clarification, the population must wonder if this enigmatic appointment was nakedly transactional or a harbinger of greater non-partisanship.

In a brave new world, Ms Persad-Bissessar has been elected on the strength of 351,025 votes out of 1.2 million. She has a parliamentary majority not exactly proportionate to her support. Coming to power at a time of weariness globally over the rise of populist, charismatic leaders, she invokes Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Donald Trump all at once. In her political rhetoric, she is a mother “who loves you.”

But in George Orwell’s 1984, which warns of totalitarianism built on personality cults, there is a Ministry of Love. And its function is manipulation, not the upholding of freedom. Words are one thing. What the new PM does with greater power is another.