Gail Alexan­der

If the Prime Min­is­ter is re­tain­ing Jack Warn­er in Gov­ern­ment, then for­mer Ude­cott head Calder Hart can come back home since Hart, like Warn­er, had al­so been praised for per­for­mance in his time as Ude­cott head, says Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) deputy leader Robert May­ers.Re­main­ing un­con­vinced that the COP got a fair deal in the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, May­ers al­so said yes­ter­day that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar had no re­spect for Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Win­ston Dook­er­an.May­ers spoke af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­as­sur­ance on Mon­day that the COP had re­ceived a fair share in her Cab­i­net re­align­ment. The COP wrote Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sun­day-im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter word of cer­tain im­pend­ing Cab­i­net changes- seek­ing a meet­ing in the spir­it of uni­ty.

The PM, how­ev­er, of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced her changes a cou­ple hours af­ter COP's let­ter was de­liv­ered to the St Ann's res­i­dence.COP MP Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan who was shift­ed from En­er­gy to Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion has said she would have not ac­cept­ed the post if it had been a per­son­al de­ci­sion. But she said she had to be guid­ed by the coali­tion's in­ter­est (and ac­cept­ed it).COP sen­a­tor Prof Patrick Wat­son was axed al­so. He said he did not feel the time had come for him to leave and he felt some el­e­ments in the PP "seem bent on UNC-fy­ing the PP."

Ex­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, Wat­son had said "not the Prime Min­is­ter, but cer­tain peo­ple there," and it was ev­i­dent to him the way some ap­point­ments were made, the COP was be­ing mar­gin­alised, "and UNC peo­ple were get­ting the strongest posts."COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an had said he was dis­ap­point­ed that Seep­er­sad-Bachan was shift­ed and COP deputy leader Prakash Ra­mad­har had toed the line with par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers' po­si­tion on the is­sue.But MP Anil Roberts had crit­i­cised Bachan's stance, al­so say­ing some in the COP com­plained too much.Yes­ter­day, deputy leader May­ers said he was told that Per­sad- Bisses­sar was will­ing to have talks with the COP. But May­ers launched a blis­ter­ing at­tack on the Prime Min­is­ter, start­ing with her han­dling of the Warn­er is­sue.

"Warn­er has brought not on­ly the of­fice of the Works Min­istry in­to dis­re­pute, but the coun­try as well," he said. "There seems to be a grow­ing tol­er­ance for such things by peo­ple who should know bet­ter...It can­not be that cor­rup­tion is OK once you're per­form­ing. "If that's how they feel, then we should all bring back (Calder) Hart be­cause he did a lot of work and he was praised for his per­for­mance al­so and then al­le­ga­tions were lev­elled against him just like that hap­pened with Warn­er."Madam Prime Min­is­ter ad­dressed the na­tion last Sun­day, not as Prime Min­is­ter, but as UNC leader, and all she did in her reshuf­fle was con­sol­i­date the UNC's po­si­tion in Gov­ern­ment.

"While the Prime Min­is­ter would have act­ed with con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty, she is in fact in a coali­tion and so she might not have had the moral au­thor­i­ty to do it...She should have spo­ken to the COP leader."May­ers said the sit­u­a­tion sup­port­ed the view by COP lead­er­ship con­tender Ver­non de Li­ma that the par­ty's leader need­ed to be out­side the Cab­i­net and not ham­strung by col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when the time came to speak about con­tro­ver­sial is­sues."The Prime Min­is­ter says she spoke with Car­olyn and Prakash last Sat­ur­day, so it seems that hav­ing con­sult­ed with the par­ty's deputy lead­ers, she may be­lieve Dook­er­an is his­to­ry," he said.

"She has had no re­spect for Win­ston since he was in the UNC."When Win­ston and (Bas­deo) Pan­day had prob­lems, she gal­vanised peo­ple in the UNC for her to be­come Op­po­si­tion Leader...She's al­ways had dis­re­spect for him and she ap­pears to still have it now."So don't feel she's a nice gen­tle lit­tle lamb-she's a dead­ly se­ri­ous politi­cian."She's us­ing the Pan­day mod­el to em­brace To­ba­go us­ing the meth­ods he did in 1995...She's ap­point­ed Del­mon Bak­er to Fi­nance and giv­en a post to Em­bau Mo­heni who's NJAC's point man in To­ba­go.

"If she adds a few PNM MPs to the mix, she can dis­pense with To­ba­go en­tire­ly as Pan­day did."May­ers said he be­lieved Bachan's shift from En­er­gy was to "al­low cer­tain peo­ple to get their con­tracts that were stalled un­der Bachan's watch."The UNC has al­ways been sad­dled with the cor­rup­tion im­age and no one has for­got­ten the Pi­ar­co Air­port project," he said.On the cre­ation of a For­eign Af­fairs/In­for­ma­tion Min­istry un­der Su­ruj Ram­bachan, he al­so said: "If you un­der­stand why Fazeer Mo­hammed was fired from CN­MG, you'll un­der­stand why com­mu­ni­ca­tions is un­der Su­ruj."