PM Kamla dismisses Rowley's objections to Reshmi's appointment; calls it a red herring

PM Kamla: "What is really the objection to the appointment of this director to the SSA? Is it because she is 31 years old?"

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Saturday called the fuss about the appointment of Reshmi Ramnarine as head of the Strategic Service Agency (SSA) a red herring.

Speaking in an interview with Radio i95 after delivering an address at a seminar for state board members at NAPA she asked: "What is really the objection to the appointment of this director to the SSA?" 

"Is it because she is 31 years old? Is it because she is an academically qualified woman with nearly a decade of experience within what was then the SIA?"

Ramnarine's appointment created major news headlines, with the Trinidad Express saying that staff were upset over that she got the job. The paper also suggested that she was not qualified to hold such a position. 

Ramnarine quit Saturday after days on the job, saying her safety and security were compromised by all the publicity.

One of the major critics was opposition leader Keith Rowley. Persad-Bissessar dismissed his objections.

"It is absurd that Dr Keith Rowley, who now leads the very political organisation that was in government when the SIA illegally and immorally tapped into the private conversations of politicians, judges, journalists, private citizens, even the President, can have the temerity today to ask whether this appointment was designed to perpetuate the very practices carried out under the very PNM administration of which he was a part," she said.

She accused the Opposition of basing its fears and accusations on its understanding of how that party functioned when it was in government while it judges the People's Partnership government by its own yardstick of "subterfuge and corruption." She insisted that there was nothing clandestine about Ramnarine's appointment.

"This red herring cannot erase what happened during the PNM administration with the SIA. Let Dr Rowley spend the time explaining how that occurred— he stayed silent through all of that—rather than to cast these spurious and unsubstantiated allegations," the Prime Minister said.

The Express also spoke with Ramnarine's father who is quoted as saying that his daughter appears to be have been hounded out of office.