ANOTHER member of the People’s National Congress/Reform (PNC/R) has resigned. This time it is former Member of Parliament and former minister of government, Simona Broomes. It was only a few months ago that reports of Broomes’ resignation surfaced; however, she vehemently denied the online article. Similar news has resurfaced, but this time around Broomes has not come out in denial. Instead, she resorted to doing a live social media broadcast in which she said that she would be following the path that God has laid out for her. “I don’t care about what people say in the media; what I care about is what God thinks about me,” Broomes said in a Facebook video posted on Monday.

While she did not admit pointedly to the resignation, the miner said that she will be spending a lot more time providing assistance to persons in need. “I’ll be out there in your community… we are going to be focusing on youth, women, women empowerment, the elderly,” the former Natural Resources Minister said.

During the 2015-2020 tenure of the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Government, Broomes was tossed around from one government ministry to the next.
Once a social rights activist, Broomes was first appointed in 2015 as Minister within the Ministry of Social Protection. There she served for several months before being moved over to the Ministry of Natural Resources as a junior minister.

After another few months, Broomes was given the title Minister with responsibility for Youth Affairs. It is unclear as to what her duties for the latter post entailed, since there was already a substantive Minister of Social Cohesion, Culture, Youth and Sport. This minister was Dr George Norton.

Even after the government changed following the very dramatic 2020 General and Regional Elections, Broomes was overlooked as a potential parliamentarian. During her tenure in Parliament, Brooms delivered an ‘unprecedented unparliamentary presentation’ that went viral. It was called the “boom-out” video and astonishingly, it was produced in the chambers of the National Assembly.

Broomes was also videoed in 2018 during a brawl at the New Thriving Restaurant at Providence, East Bank Demerara, where she claimed abuse by two guards of the establishment. Broomes had even said that one of the guards pointed a gun at her, resulting in the young man being arrested for 16 hours. Fortunately, Josh Rambarran was exonerated, after surveillance videos of the area proved that the claim by the then Natural Resources Minister was false.

On the contrary, the CCTV footage showed that it was Broomes and her driver/bodyguard who were “bullying” their way to park in a no-parking zone as they proceeded to buy food.

Nonetheless, as Broomes embarks on this chapter, she said that she knows exactly where she is headed, and that the future is bigger and better. “…it’s very independent, sober and responsible,” the former minister posited.

She continued: “When I go out there and I say something and do something, I am not coming to you in the name of this and in the name of that, or I have to be guided by any particular line or views of anybody. I am only guided by the word of the Lord. That is where I’m taking my cues from.”

In her 40-minute long video, Broomes also responded to what seem to be criticisms that she has received since news of her resignation surfaced. “People talk all kinds of wild things, but for me, I always drink soup just ‘cause God is my soup provider…so hey, don’t go down that road that Broomes is a soup-drinker. Where you going with that? Rest ya self.”

Prior to entering the world of politics, Broomes was an award-winning activist, working to combat Trafficking in Persons, particularly in and around the mining communities of Guyana.