Gail Alexan­der

What­ev­er late PNM MP Ken Val­ley did, he al­ways did well, ac­cord­ing to for­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day. Pan­day com­ment­ed yes­ter­day on Val­ley's death. The one time PNM deputy leader had been bat­tling colon can­cer over the last few years. Pan­day said, "I have known Ken for quite a long time, both of us be­ing MPs. I've al­ways main­tained that if some­one is on a dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal path than mine, it doesn't make him an en­e­my. "There­fore Ken and I had a good re­la­tion­ship. He was very ar­tic­u­late in Par­lia­ment and very force­ful. What­ev­er he did, he al­ways did it well. He will be missed," Pan­day said ex­tend­ing sym­pa­thies to Val­ley's fam­i­ly.

Pan­day who be­gan host­ing "The Po­lit­i­cal Re­al­i­ty" on Tues­days a tele­vi­sion fo­rum for min­is­ters to an­swer cit­i­zens' ques­tions, said the first per­son he in­tends to in­vite is Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal. Pan­day al­so queried whether Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar rep­ri­mand­ed Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath on the is­sue at Thurs­day's Cab­i­net ses­sion, and whether she had done the same with Mooni­lal. Pan­day dis­tanced him­self from Mooni­lal who spear­head­ed Pan­day's 2006 cam­paign to be re-elect­ed UNC leader. Pan­day added: "If I trained him, this is one case where the stu­dent clear­ly didn't learn any­thing. He's ex­treme­ly ar­ro­gant-I think the farm­ers recog­nised that. He's latched on to pow­er and he and the en­tire Gov­ern­ment are de­tached from the UNC's philoso­phies. They're los­ing the peo­ple's sup­port."

Pan­day said he saw Per­sad-Bisses­sar had tak­en up a point he made about a fea­si­bil­i­ty study which iden­ti­fied fer­tile and non fer­tile lands. He added: "But I still want to know who gave the or­der to bull­doze, why it was nec­es­sary and why the op­por­tu­ni­ty was not giv­en to reap the crops." Pan­day added, "In the farm­ers' is­sue, they all kept say­ing it's a choice be­tween hous­ing and agri­cul­ture but no­body is telling them not to build. The is­sue is whether they will build on agri­cul­tur­al lands." Pan­day said he in­tends invit­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar on his show "as soon as she's ready to come." He said PP's up­com­ing an­niver­sary may be a good time.