Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal stal­warts who served dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion are com­ing for­ward, say­ing they are will­ing to serve the UNC once more.

It comes a day af­ter for­mer UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Jack Warn­er said he was ready to con­test a seat for the par­ty again in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions if par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gives him the nod. He has set his sights on his old stomp­ing ground of Ch­agua­nas West.

Yes­ter­day, for­mer Barataria/San Juan MP Dr Fuad Khan said he too was ready.

“If she (Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) calls I will be very hap­py to serve,” Khan told Guardian Me­dia.

Khan held the Barataria/San Juan seat from 1995 and 2007 and again from 2010 to 2015. He al­so served as a Min­is­ter of Health.

He said he would bring great val­ue in help­ing the UNC main­tain the mar­gin­al Barataria/San Juan seat.

How­ev­er, asked if he would con­sid­er of­fer­ing him­self to be the MP for the con­stituen­cy once more, Khan said, “I don’t want to an­swer that be­cause there’s a sit­ting MP right now. It all de­pends on what the sit­ting MP wants to do. If he’s not in­ter­est­ed then I have no prob­lem rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple of Barataria/San Juan.”

Khan said he can al­so be an as­set in the Cab­i­net.

“I had the Min­istry of Health go­ing in a good di­rec­tion and I had a lot of plans for it so it would be nice to con­tin­ue the plans to make things bet­ter for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he ex­plained.

Khan added that the UNC may be miss­ing some sea­soned politi­cians.

Mean­while, for­mer Food Pro­duc­tion min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said he has al­ready let Per­sad-Bisses­sar know he is will­ing to serve.

“I have al­ready laid my cards on the ta­ble and made it very clear that the PNM gov­ern­ment has to be re­moved. I have of­fered my­self to the UNC and Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar to as­sist the par­ty to get it back in­to of­fice. So ab­solute­ly I in­tend to put my­self for­ward for a po­si­tion in the par­ty,” he said.

In Ju­ly, Bharath re­turned to the UNC and spoke at its pre-bud­get con­sul­ta­tion in Tu­na­puna. He then de­scribed the UNC leader as “mag­nan­i­mous.”

Bharath said he be­lieves he can win a seat along the East/West cor­ri­dor, hav­ing lived there his en­tire life. Bharath once held the St Au­gus­tine seat for the UNC in 2007.

How­ev­er, the choice to re­turn to elec­toral pol­i­tics is not so straight­for­ward for for­mer Le­gal Af­fairs min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har.

“It will be an ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to make and I will make that de­ci­sion if the sit­u­a­tion aris­es,” Ra­mad­har ex­plained.

The for­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader added he would not com­plete­ly rule out a re­turn.

“But it is not some­thing I would dis­miss as a ‘no go’ be­cause this coun­try needs a lot of help and I am so hap­py that there are so many peo­ple who are will­ing to con­tribute to make this coun­try what it ought to be,” he said.

He agreed with Khan that ex­pe­ri­ence would be cru­cial to the UNC at this time.

“Ex­pe­ri­ence is crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly when you are deal­ing with un­chart­ed and dan­ger­ous wa­ters and there­fore, I adore the young, bright po­ten­tial lead­ers in the pol­i­tics but there must be a mix of ex­pe­ri­ence, wis­dom and knowl­edge,” he said.

Ra­mad­har served as St Au­gus­tine MP on two oc­ca­sions.

But an­oth­er for­mer COP leader said no par­ty has piqued her in­ter­est enough to re­turn to elec­toral pol­i­tics.

Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who was once San Fer­nan­do West MP, said, “I am not see­ing any­body mak­ing mean­ing­ful change to T&T. It can’t be the same old, same old. We have to move for­ward and that re­quires a whole new vi­sion and par­a­digm shift, and I am not sure we are pre­pared po­lit­i­cal­ly to com­mit to that. This is why I left the pol­i­tics. I was ad­vo­cat­ing for change and I don’t know if we are ready for that change at all.”

And for­mer Tabaquite MP Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan said he con­tin­ues to serve the UNC in a men­tor­ship role and has no in­ter­est in re­turn­ing to elec­toral pol­i­tics.

Mean­while, the UNC will be­gin screen­ing gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates soon. Par­ty chair­man Dave Tan­coo said yes­ter­day a meet­ing amongst the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive will be held next week and a date for that process will be fixed.