The founder of the United National Congress says the party was now on a path for a “slow and painful death” now that the membership has re-elected Kamla Persad-Bissessar as its leader.
Basdeo Panday, who championed the party into government in 1995 and was later dethroned by Persad-Bissessar in 2010, was bitter in his criticism of this country’s first woman prime minister.
He said there was the perception that Persad-Bissessar did not have the leadership qualities to restore the UNC to its pristine glory.
He said the original UNC was against corruption, waste and mismanagement but the charges against the last Persad-Bissessar-led administration in relation to these would work against it in Parliament.
Panday’s administration was voted out of office in 2001 in the face of widespread allegations of corruption.
Even Panday himself was charged and later convicted of failing to declare a million-dollar bank account he had in London to the Integrity Commission. At a retrial in 2012, Panday was freed after a magistrate ruled the charges were filed out of time.
In 2002, businessmen Ishwar Galbaransingh and Steve Ferguson, both financiers of the UNC, were also charged with series of fraud offences relating to the $1.6 billion Piarco Airport Development Project, which was mired in controversy from the start.
While they were
able to successfully challenge their extradition to the United States, the local charges are still pending.
“They will not be able to challenge the PNM on anything. They will always shove this down their throats. It is already happening,” Panday said.
He did not think Persad-Bissessar had the support of the majority of UNC members, even though she got 15,000-plus votes while Roodal Moonilal and Vasant Bharath got a little over 1,000 each.
“When the UNC was in government, the membership was kept alive by handouts. Now there is nothing to hand out,” he said, apparently referring to the rest of the 95,000 registered members who did not vote.
He said based on reports, it appeared there were several irregularities in the voting process in the UNC elections.
Panday believes the vacuum created in the UNC is going to be filled by a new party comprising “anti-PNM forces.”
Days before nominations closed, Panday’s daughter, Mickela, who was being courted as a possible nominee for political leader, announced that she was not contesting any position as she feared the election process would not be free and fair.
Don’t write off Kamla yet
Commenting on the preliminary results, political analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath, expressed surprise by the margin of victory Persad-Bissessar had over her challengers.
“I expected her to win based on the sentiments I have been getting,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“I did not think (Roodal) Moonilal would have lost so badly.”
And what about the other contender, Vasant Bharath?
“I will say nothing about Vasant,” he said.
Pressed, he also said: “I don’t think he stood a chance from the beginning.”
Ragoonath said Bharath lost the moment he blamed (at the start of his campaign) Persad-Bissessar for the UNC’s defeat in the September 7 general election.
“And when Fuad Khan said he would be the next Opposition leader. The membership saw them as being too big for their shoes,” he added.
Ragoonath said he thought Moonilal would have been a greater challenge to Persad-Bissessar because he was anointed by Panday, and later Persad-Bissessar herself, as UNC heir apparent.
The UNC membership had now literally said it did not want Bharath and Moonilal, the political analyst said.
As for criticisms from her rivals that the UNC under her leadership was doomed to be in opposition forever, Ragoonath was not so sure about that.
He recalled it was Persad-Bissessar, under similar circumstances in 2010, who took the UNC from nowhere into government.
“Panday was also saying then that under her the UNC will be in opposition,” he noted.
As for those who have been saying she should ride off into the sunset after the party’s loss in the last general election and four others before it, Ragoonath said the UNC membership had also spoken decisively on that.
“And I don’t think you can query the membership of a party when it speaks,” he said.