Renu­ka Singh

The birth­place of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)–the his­tor­i­cal Rien­zi Com­plex–is now home to a new po­lit­i­cal par­ty. The Na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty As­sem­bly (NSA), launched yes­ter­day at the UNC base, is made up of mem­bers of the All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (AT­G­WU) and ex-Ca­roni work­ers.

The par­ty, led by AT­G­WU head Nir­van Ma­haraj, is a break­away fac­tion of the UNC, but as the Rien­zi Com­plex is owned by the union it has first pref­er­ence for its use.

"The UNC can con­tin­ue to rent here but it is strict­ly a land­lord/ten­ant re­la­tion­ship and as long as they ho­n­our that agree­ment they can con­tin­ue to stay," Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Guardian in an in­ter­view af­ter the par­ty launch.

Ma­haraj, who spoke last at yes­ter­day's launch, said the NSA would chal­lenge the UNC in the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Ma­haraj blast­ed both UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and his pre­de­ces­sor Rudy In­dars­ingh for us­ing the ex-Ca­roni work­ers to get in­to of­fice and then turn­ing their backs on them soon af­ter elec­tions.

"The UNC be­trayed their peo­ple. The be­lieve they have a di­vine right to my vote just be­cause I look like them and that is not true," Ma­haraj said.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not even show up at Rien­zi af­ter the elec­tion loss on Sep­tem­ber 7 and that proved to the sup­port­ers that she was on­ly in­ter­est­ed in "us­ing" them for votes but did not care about them.

He said the for­mer gov­ern­ment gave away lands ear­marked for Ca­roni work­ers to their "friends" who owned com­pa­nies and then said that there were no more lands for the ex-Ca­roni work­ers.

"Now that they lost elec­tions, they are telling us to 'come back home'. Come back home to what? You can­not take those words and go to the su­per­mar­ket," Ma­haraj told the sub­stan­tial gath­er­ing.

Ma­haraj said the same con­dem­na­tion the AT­G­WU had lev­elled against the PNM af­ter 2007 was the same lev­el of con­dem­na­tion they were now lev­el­ling at the UNC.

"They use race to pit us against each oth­er so that when we are so busy fight­ing each oth­er on the ground we do not see the fail­ings of our lead­ers," he said.

Ma­haraj said as many as 6,000 ex-Ca­roni work­ers were still await­ing the lands promised to them and cit­ed the 2007 Deyals­ingh judge­ment which grant­ed the for­mer sug­ar work­ers the le­gal rights to the lands which were po­lit­i­cal­ly promised to them in 2003.

But now, some 12 years lat­er, the AT­G­WU is push­ing back.

"To­day is a glo­ri­ous day be­cause unit­ed we are go­ing to tell the PNM (Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment) and the UNC that enough is enough," Ma­haraj said.

In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, Ma­haraj said he had no thoughts on the UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tions but had al­ready vis­it­ed 13 elec­torates un­der the NSA ban­ner.

"I have di­vorced my­self from the UNC, so in­ter­nal elec­tions is their busi­ness. It is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult and daunt­ing to start this po­lit­i­cal chal­lenge but we are ready for it," he said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched her cam­paign for in­ter­nal elec­tions yes­ter­day in Pe­nal. In­dars­ingh did not re­turn calls to his mo­bile phone.