NACTA released findings of a poll conducted by pollster Vishnu Bisram that showed that the popularity of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar had slipped and that people were not happy with the government’s performance
An ANSA McAL poll, supervised by senior lecturer in the Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Dr Derek Chadee, also showed that people surveyed were not satisfied with the government’s performance.
Both surveys showed that Jack Warner is the most hardworking and competent minister.
After nearly nine months since the People’s Partnership coalition government was voted into office, blunders and a failure to deliver on some aspects of its 120-day immediate action plan are responsible for the prime minister and the government’s popularity slipping.
A total of 509 respondents rated the performance of Persad-Bissessar and the People’s Partnership in five categories — excellent, good, fair, poor and extremely poor. The biggest faux pas to date, according to the respondents, is the controversial hiring of former Strategic Services Agency (SSA) director, Reshmi Ramnarine. This has hurt the prime minister’s image the most.
Ranking the performance of Persad-Bissessar as fair, 38 percent of respondents felt the prime minister has failed to be proactive and suggested that she adopts the more action, less talk approach. However, the respondents said the prime minister’s decision to apologise on certain matters gained her some points, but she needed to get a grip and control of some of her ministers.