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POLITICAL analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath said he was surprised by many aspects of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s “buss head” speech at a UNC Monday Night Forum in Couva on August 11 to mark the party’s 100-day anniversary since taking office after the April 28 general election. However, he said the speech projected her as a strong leader.

Persad-Bissessar said certain people in her party have been seen cavorting in hotels with dubious political financiers linked to the former PNM. She alleged corruption in the Ministry of Works and said an unnamed minister had been approached by a land developer who said a bank was funding his purchase of land and construction of a building to be rented back to the lender. The PM also sought to link the now-suspended Cepep programme to corruption, criminality and worker exploitation including sexual abuse as she dubbed it “another kind of slavery.”

The opposition has alleged gross hardship among some 20,000 people now on the breadline after the firing of Cepep and reforestation workers upon these programmes’ closure.