Richard Lord

Both the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Bas­deo Pan­day and one of his dis­si­dent deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers Jack Warn­er were sched­uled to launch their elec­tion cam­paigns on the same day and time–to­mor­row at 7 pm. Warn­er bought air time from at least four ra­dio sta­tions to se­cure live broad­cast of his meet­ing. Pan­day has not se­cured any of the sta­tions to broad­cast his meet­ing live. But, on his re­turn to T&T af­ter spend­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­days in Eng­land, Pan­day quick­ly changed his launch date–ad­vanc­ing it by 24 hours. It will now take place close to the con­stituen­cy of­fice of his main chal­lenger Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at Pe­nal Junc­tion tonight. Pan­day has now bought air time from at least one ra­dio sta­tion–Akash Vani 106.5FM to broad­cast his meet­ing.

There will be cul­tur­al pre­sen­ta­tions, in­clud­ing tas­sa drum­ming and chut­ney mu­sic from dif­fer­ent groups and in­di­vid­u­als. Apart from Pan­day, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal will al­so ad­dress the meet­ing. Mooni­lal is ex­pect­ed to deal with al­leged moves by some to dis­solve the UNC and es­tab­lish a new po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion in T&T. Ques­tioned about the re­jec­tion of some 16,000 new mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tions, he quipped that "he would be pre­pared to see all 16,000 in­di­vid­u­al­ly or one by one–a ref­er­ence to a state­ment made by a for­mer politi­cian from Rio Claro in the 1970s." Fyz­abad MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma is al­so among the list of speak­ers at tonight's meet­ing. Sources say the UNC will re­spond to a lot of com­ments made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar in re­cent days.