Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has dispelled suggestions that her offer of a secondary school and a pavilion to the Spiritual Shouter Baptist community is an election bribe. She made the comment during a National Convocation of Spiritual Baptist at Fifth Company, Princes Town, on Tuesday. Asserting herself as a believer, she told fellow devotees that everything they received was owed to them as citizens.
“Whatever way I can help you, I will try to do my best. Never ever believe that whatever we do is a bribe to you because that is an insult to you,” the PM, who first made the offer during celebrations on Monday in Maloney, said. “When one says when we help you it is a bribe, that is an insult. It is your rightful due, it is your just due because here in this land we sing every creed and every race find and equal place.”
Accompanied by her grandson Kristiano, who she said she brought along to witness the strength of Spiritual Baptists, she preached to the congregation using scriptures from the Holy Bible, adding that the verses helped her overcome all her challenges. While telling her childhood story of being baptised in the faith at Quinam Beach along with her siblings, she said there were people who would say she was faking her beliefs.
“There may be those who say that I wear your clothing, some say, well I am faking. I want you to know that since I was a child I was baptised like you in the healing water, in the cleansing water. “So when I come to speak with you, this is not about faking anything. This is about what I know in my heart growing up as a child,” she said.
“Tonight I brought my grandson because I want him to know how strong you are, how you fought, how you evicted the colonial power and you persevered with your determination. From that you gave me strength for every challenge I have. “You always hear me say put God in front and walk behind and I mean this as I mean anything in my life, because without God we are nothing, we are no one.”
Noting that Mandingo Road in Princes Town was home to the Merikins, who established the Spiritual Baptist faith in T&T, Tableland South/Moruga MP Clifton De Coteau said history was made as Persad-Bissessar was “the first East Indian Baptist Prime Minister” to visit the heartland. Saying Persad-Bissessar was a champion for “black people,” he warned there would be people who would try to “divide and rule” as election approached.
“Tonight you have one of your own, a true Baptist, baptised when she was a little girl, the first Baptist Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. They’re going to play down that and they are going to try to demonise the Prime Minister but in truth and in fact, I can tell you if it is one person who does fight for black people is this honourable Prime Minister,” he saidd.