Gail Alexan­der

Leader of Op­po­si­tion busi­ness in the Sen­ate Wade Mark has made it known he is avail­able to "con­tin­ue to play" his role "in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment" in build­ing the UNC.

Mark told the Guardian of his po­si­tion in be­tween yes­ter­day's Sen­ate sit­ting. Changes among UNC's cur­rent Sen­ate team, in­clud­ing Sen­ate team leader Mark, have been tipped by mem­bers of the new UNC Ex­ec­u­tive, head­ed by leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Among those tipped to en­ter the Sen­ate are UNC deputy lead­ers Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit. The lat­ter was re­moved by out­go­ing Op­po­si­tion leader Bas­deo Pan­day two weeks ago. Ou­dit's Sen­ate seat was de­clared va­cant and she was re­placed by PSA vice-pres­i­dent Christo­pher Joe­field. The lat­ter was sworn in and took his Sen­ate place yes­ter­day. A ques­tion filed by Ou­dit on yes­ter­day's Sen­ate agen­da, con­cern­ing il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­at­ing, fell by the way­side since she was not in the Sen­ate. How­ev­er on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said re­in­state­ment of Ou­dit and two fired Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials were to be con­sid­ered at yes­ter­day's UNC cau­cus.

In be­tween yes­ter­day's Sen­ate ses­sion Sen­a­tor Mark was asked by the Guardian about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing re­moved. Mark, who has been a UNC Sen­a­tor since Oc­to­ber 1990, said: "As a strong and dis­ci­plined par­ty mem­ber and as an es­tab­lished team play­er, it is the pre­rog­a­tive of the Op­po­si­tion Leader to ap­point and/or dis­ap­point any Sen­a­tor, in­clu­sive of my­self. "As sol­dier in the UNC army, I am avail­able to con­tin­ue to play my role and part in con­tribut­ing to­wards the build­ing of this great par­ty both in­side and out­side the Par­lia­ment and as it seeks to pro­vide T&T with a vi­able, pro­gres­sive, ac­cept­able po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tive to the cor­rupt bank­rupt, in­com­pe­tent and dy­ing Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion,". Pri­or to the start of yes­ter­day's Sen­ate ses­sion Mark and oth­er UNC MPs re­ceived some pi­cong from PNM Sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing PNM's Jer­ry Narace and George Hadeed.

Narace went over and shook Mark's hand, chat­ting with him at length with broad grins. Hadeed, with some laugh­ter, quipped to Mark and UNC Sen­a­tors about the ses­sion, that it might be their "last day in the Sen­ate." UNC Sen­a­tor MF Ra­haman who had of­fered his res­ig­na­tion to Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the week­end, which she re­ject­ed as "pre­ma­ture," said yes­ter­day he had al­ways felt Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the like­ly suc­ces­sor to Pan­day. Ra­haman said he had writ­ten about that in let­ters to the ed­i­tors of var­i­ous pa­pers over the years. Ra­haman added: "Peo­ple may not know my writ­ings about her and might feel I'm suck­ing up now so to speak, but then, as now, I had felt Kam­la was com­pe­tent and she was a very good mech­a­nism to bring the in­ter­ests of the coun­try in favour of the UNC, par­tic­u­lar­ly where gen­der ap­peal was con­cerned. "You can check the news­pa­per records and you will see where I made those points be­fore. "How­ev­er I did not an­tic­i­pate the pow­er of pro­pa­gan­da in the UNC elec­tion. We wait to see how she deals with the is­sue of the 'hand with­in the glove' be­cause that con­cerns me great­ly as that force be­longs to a force I do not trust."