- Trinidad and Tobago’s People’s Partnership leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been nominated the first woman Prime Minister of the country after her coalition led by her won a thrashing majority and ended the ruling party’s 43 years in power.
- Outgoing Prime Minister Patrick Manning conceded defeat after being in power since 2002.
- For the first time since independence in August 1962, a coalition of four other parties joined to meet head-on the ruling People’s National Movement which has been in power for 43 years.
- The five parties are Ms. Persad-Bissessar’s United National Congress, Congress of the People (COP), the National Joint Action Committee, Tobago Organisation of Peoples, and the Movement for Social Change.
- These parties came under the banner of the “People’s Partnership”, with each party maintaining its own symbol on the ballot paper.
- Her spectacular rise started on January 24 last year when she successfully challenged her mentor, Basdeo Panday, for the leadership of the United National Congress which he had founded 20 years ago.
- Ms. Persad-Bissessar was a topper in law school and she did her MBA and diploma in education from the University of the West Indies.
- She was the first woman attorney general and also served as minister of legal affairs as well as minister of education
- Her forefather was amongst the 148,000 Indian labourers who were brought here between 1845 and 1917 to work on the sugar and cocoa plantations. The Indian diaspora comprises 44 per cent of the population of 1.3 million people.
[Contributed By Aman Maggu]
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