Gail Alexan­der

Cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions put the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP)/Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion out of of­fice in the 2010 gen­er­al polls and more al­le­ga­tions or cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed charges against UNC mem­bers could well keep the UNC out of gov­ern­ment in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

It's not a PN­Mite say­ing that. It's for­mer UNC Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP and min­is­ter of state, Collin Par­tap do­ing so.

Par­tap, 46, an at­tor­ney, broke his si­lence on the par­ty of which he's been a mem­ber since his teens—and he's not hap­py with the Op­po­si­tion UNC's state, but has a pos­i­tive view of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) tenure.

Par­tap was re­moved by for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar from his post as a min­is­ter in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Au­gust 2012, af­ter re­fus­ing to do a po­lice breathal­yser test. Of­fi­cers said they saw him leav­ing Zen night­club drink­ing from an al­co­hol bot­tle, he en­tered his SUV, turned on the flash­ing blue lights and left. When he was stopped, he re­fused the test.

Af­ter be­ing charged, on tri­al in Ju­ly 2013, he was found guilty and or­dered to pay a $5,000 fine. Then mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar said this was nec­es­sary to de­ter po­ten­tial of­fend­ers and be­cause Par­tap was an MP, at­tor­ney and gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, he should have led by ex­am­ple and com­plied with of­fi­cers. His ap­peal was quashed. Par­tap re­mained a back­bencher for the rest of the PP's term.

Af­ter PP lost of­fice in Sep­tem­ber 2015, Par­tap has been build­ing his le­gal prac­tice and not been po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­tive with UNC or any oth­er par­ty.

Why?

He says, "T&T's pol­i­tics will on­ly change when there's mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. Al­so, UNC will find it hard to win key mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies it'll need to form gov­ern­ment plus re­cent cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed al­le­ga­tions (mov­ing to charges) might lead the elec­torate to 'feel' there was cor­rup­tion.

"It was cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions which forced Mrs Per­sad- Bisses­sar from the Gov­ern­ment in 2015 and cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed charges could keep her out in 2020.

"Once the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al (Anand Ram­lo­gan) and UNC sen­a­tor (Ger­ald Ramdeen) were charged, she'll have to de­cide whether to keep Ramdeen in the Sen­ate. Es­pe­cial­ly since in the past she nev­er wait­ed for charges to be laid. Mere al­le­ga­tion was enough to re­move min­is­ters from her gov­ern­ment."

Does Par­tap's "court ex­pe­ri­ence" make him feel kin­ship with his col­leagues now in the le­gal spot­light?

"I was gone (from the Gov­ern­ment) in eight hours, so, no, I don't feel any kin­ship. And mine was a traf­fic of­fence. These are cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed charges," Par­tap added.

Gives PNM a grade B

He knocked holes in­to his for­mer boss' ad­dress at last week­end's UNC an­niver­sary func­tion. He said she didn't de­tail how her promised plans—in­clud­ing 50,000 new jobs—would be cre­at­ed. "Throw­ing out of fig­ures is old time pol­i­tics...vot­ers now ex­pect more. Her speech was geared to launch the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign so UNC's web­site should have fleshed out poli­cies for vot­ers to un­der­stand."

Plus Par­tap doesn't feel the con­stituen­cy where he cut his po­lit­i­cal teeth as MP over 2010/15 is as elec­tion ready as it should be.

With that UNC as­sess­ment, Par­tap gives the PNM Gov­ern­ment a "B" Grade for their term so far.

"The Prime Min­is­ter has open­ly de­clared war on cor­rup­tion. His gov­ern­ment has closed fail­ing state en­ter­pris­es, some­thing no oth­er gov­ern­ment had the po­lit­i­cal guts to do. The steel mill and (Petrotrin) re­fin­ery will be op­er­a­tional soon with job cre­ation. The econ­o­my may get a cash in­jec­tion in the next cou­ple of years which will in­crease eco­nom­ic growth and ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing jobs. The ap­point­ment of Gary Grif­fith as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was one of Gov­ern­ment's best de­ci­sions. I have hope he'll do his best and is do­ing his best to get a han­dle on the one el­e­ment that could make or break the ad­min­is­tra­tion in the 2020 polls."

But on ru­mours that Par­tap may be­come po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­tive with his for­mer par­ty—or PNM—he says, "I can­not say if I'll re­turn to pol­i­tics. If the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve T&T ever aris­es it'll be a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion be­cause it'll mean giv­ing up my prac­tice again cou­pled with long hours. But if I do, it must be with a po­lit­i­cal leader/par­ty who was and is tack­ling cor­rup­tion head-on and isn't afraid to make tough de­ci­sions in T&T's in­ter­est, even if it means they might lose an elec­tion."

He be­lieves Vas­ant Bharath's re­cent­ly launched move­ment "... is symp­to­matic of a frus­trat­ed elec­torate".

"How much he cap­tures will be de­ter­mined by his up­com­ing po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vres. The Con­gress of the Peo­ple may al­so have a say in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the un­de­cid­ed. But the two ma­jor par­ties will al­ways be the main con­tenders."

Vas­ant sor­ry for Anand, Ger­ald

Yes­ter­day Vas­ant Bharath said he felt the sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen will "have a ma­jor im­pact on the UNC since they're front­lin­ers. "

"Whether it'll cost (UNC) the elec­tion, it de­pends on the out­come of the mat­ters. I don't know. But one must al­so feel a sense of sym­pa­thy and sor­row for both men as it must be a har­row­ing ex­pe­ri­ence," he added.