Leah So­rias

There will be no UNC Dol­lar Fete this year. In­stead, the an­nu­al event will be re­placed by a thanks­giv­ing par­ty in cel­e­bra­tion of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's vic­to­ry as the UNC's new leader. For the last three years, the UNC has been host­ing the pop­u­lar fete at a fee of $1. Thou­sands of pa­trons usu­al­ly at­tend.

How­ev­er, new­ly-ap­point­ed chair­man, Jack Warn­er, said that it was Per­sad-Bisses­sar's wish to cel­e­brate her vic­to­ry with sup­port­ers. He said the thanks­giv­ing par­ty would be held on Feb­ru­ary 6, at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va. Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Warn­er said: "The po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC an­nounced that she wants to have fel­low­ship and thanks­giv­ing where sup­port­ers are in­vit­ed at a price of $1 and this would re­place the Dol­lar Fete." Warn­er, who is the main fi­nancier of the event, said be­fore Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed her in­ten­tions to have the thanks­giv­ing par­ty, he was un­able to se­cure venues for the Dol­lar Fete.

"It could not be held at the grounds (of the Cou­va South MP) at Cam­den Road be­cause the grounds were not avail­able," he said. "Then we went to Mar­ket Square (Ch­agua­nas) and was told by po­lice that this venue was too small." He said the thanks­giv­ing par­ty would be sim­i­lar to the Dol­lar Fete, but would en­tail con­grat­u­la­to­ry speech­es from sev­er­al peo­ple. "There will be en­ter­tain­ment as well...it will be a big par­ty," he said. He said de­tails of the event have not been fi­nalised so he could not say any­thing more about it. "We are now putting things in place and by to­mor­row (to­day), this should be fin­ished," Warn­er said. The brain­child of Warn­er, the Dol­lar Fete was first held in 2007, and at­tract­ed some 20,000 peo­ple.

Then UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Bas­deo Pan­day de­scribed it as an ex­am­ple of how na­tion­als could put aside their dif­fer­ences and en­joy them­selves. Since then, the fete has be­come very pop­u­lar, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­clu­sion of an "Ole Mas" com­pe­ti­tion. Con­tact­ed about his views on the fete's can­cel­la­tion, Pan­day said yes­ter­day: "I have nev­er or­gan­ised any of those and I know noth­ing about it."