Yvonne Ba­boolal

In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) in­ter­im deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit was dealt some heavy blows by class­mates of ex­pelled ILP coun­cil­lor Faaiq Mo­hammed at a po­lit­i­cal fo­rum at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, yes­ter­day.

Mo­hammed, a UWI stu­dent and win­ning can­di­date in the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, was ex­pelled by the ILP af­ter he vot­ed against the par­ty and threw in his sup­port with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), end­ing the dead­lock in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion that re­sult­ed from a tie in the elec­tions.

Mo­hammed was sev­er­ly rep­ri­mand­ed by ILP leader Jack Warn­er af­ter his de­ci­sion and was al­so ac­cused of ac­cept­ing $2.5 mil­lion to switch al­le­giance. He sub­se­quent­ly said he feared for his life af­ter that and there were re­ports the ILP went on a smear cam­paign against him and al­leged­ly threat­ened him.At yes­ter­day's fo­rum, a young man went to the mi­cro­phone dur­ing the time al­lot­ed for par­tic­i­pants to ask ques­tions.

He blunt­ly asked Ou­dit why had the ILP dam­aged the rep­u­ta­tion of Mo­hammed, his fel­low stu­dent, by dri­ving through his Char­lieville home­town with a mi­cro­phone and re­port­ed­ly call­ing him a trai­tor, among oth­er re­port­ed at­tacks.The young man said he was dis­ap­point­ed with the ILP for at­tack­ing a young per­son in such a man­ner.He was ap­plaud­ed by a small group af­ter his con­tri­bu­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the con­dem­na­tion, Ou­dit said Mo­hammed's mosque put for­ward his name as a can­di­date and he was screened by the ILP ex­ec­u­tive."He went straight up to the elec­tion, which he won, and at no time did he iden­ti­fy any­thing (that both­ered him)," she said.Ou­dit, how­ev­er, de­nied the ILP brought Mo­hammed's char­ac­ter in­to dis­re­pute."At no time was his char­ac­ter brought in­to dis­re­pute. Mem­bers of his com­mu­ni­ty were very up­set. The ILP went once with a mike to in­form them (of what tran­spired)."

How­ev­er, an­oth­er young man from the au­di­ence in­ter­rupt­ed Ou­dit by shout­ing out some­thing about a "pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter."Mo­hammed, 25, an in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions stu­dent at UWI, has sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Warn­er call­ing for an apol­o­gy for defam­a­to­ry state­ments made against him. Mo­hammed, who said his com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed him, al­so wants dam­ages.

He said he vot­ed against the ILP in the in­ter­est of his com­mu­ni­ty. He said his burgess­es had is­sues with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of for­mer UNC can­di­date Fal­isha Isa­hak, who was sub­se­quent­ly put up as an al­der­man by the ILP. He said af­ter a pe­ti­tion he had with more 600 sig­na­ture was dis­re­gard­ed by the par­ty, he de­cid­ed to with­hold his sup­port of the ILP as a form of protest.Ear­li­er, Ou­dit looked un­com­fort­able while po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Sel­wyn Ryan wad­ed in­to the ILP and Warn­er.

Ryan said the ILP was a pick­up side and Warn­er is 70, an age when he should be look­ing for a spe­cial kind of in­sur­ance.Ou­dit was part of a fo­rum on the re­cent elec­tions in T&T and their im­pli­ca­tions for na­tion­al pol­i­tics.Be­side her at the head ta­ble were UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi and Ryan.Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on whether the ILP split the votes in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, caus­ing the PNM to win by de­fault, Ou­dit said yes.

"The votes were, in fact, split in the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, but not in the No­vem­ber 4 St Joseph elec­tions," she said."If you look at the num­bers in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, whether you call it split­ting or not, the com­bined votes of the op­po­si­tion–the UNC, COP and ILP–would have de­feat­ed the PNM."This split was not ev­i­dent in St Joseph, how­ev­er, which the PNM al­so won. Ou­dit blamed low vot­er turnout for that."A lot of the float­ing or in­de­pen­dent vot­ers held back in this elec­tion," she said.

Ou­dit said she did not sub­scribe to the gen­er­al de­f­i­n­i­tion of split votes. Peo­ple just made their own choic­es, she said.Asked by the T&T Guardian if she planned to stay with the ILP, de­scribed by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts as hav­ing lost mo­men­tum, Ou­dit in­di­cat­ed she was stay­ing put."It's far more im­por­tant to help build a sus­tain­able par­ty," she said.A con­sti­tu­tion is to be rat­i­fied and the par­ty is prepar­ing a man­i­festo, she said.A po­lit­i­cal al­liance was not ruled out by the ILP, she said. The ques­tion was with whom.

"The PNM is the on­ly par­ty that has re­mained by it­self," she not­ed, giv­ing a hint.