Gail Alexan­der

The PNM doesn’t need help from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to deal with its in­ter­nal af­fairs, says for­mer min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte.

In a state­ment on Tues­day, Le Hunte re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments that PNM chair­man Stu­art Young was “to­tal­ly un­qual­i­fied” to be prime min­is­ter and that the fi­as­co in the PNM over its lead­er­ship was main­ly dri­ven by Young’s eth­nic­i­ty. 

She al­so said, “And con­cern­ing Mr Le Hunte’s new­found love of democ­ra­cy, where was he when the PNM was in­ter­fer­ing in all our in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions over the last few years? Where was he when the PNM was at­tack­ing the ju­di­cia­ry and ma­nip­u­lat­ing Par­lia­ment re chang­ing vot­ing ma­jori­ties?”

Le Hunte said while he recog­nised the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s right to her views, she had “missed the mark in at­tempt­ing to as­cribe a racial el­e­ment to the in­ter­nal dis­course tak­ing place with­in the PNM.”

He added, “It is well known that cer­tain mem­bers of the PNM, in­clud­ing my­self, have ex­pressed their de­sire for the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion to be ad­hered to and the tra­di­tions of the par­ty to be main­tained. This has noth­ing to do with Min­is­ter Young’s eth­nic­i­ty and every­thing to do with en­sur­ing that the voice of the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship is heard and tak­en in­to prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion, in line with its con­sti­tu­tion.

“As I have said, at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, in ac­cor­dance with the one man, one vote phi­los­o­phy which the PNM has em­braced, Min­is­ter Young and any­one else, re­gard­less of their colour, creed, eth­nic­i­ty, or stand­ing in so­ci­ety, are wel­come to of­fer them­selves for lead­er­ship. Every­one has a home in the PNM, as can be ob­served sim­ply from the com­po­si­tion of the present Cab­i­net.”

Le Hunte said he wasn’t sure the same could be said about the UNC.

“I can­not say that I am shocked, but I am cer­tain­ly dis­ap­point­ed by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments. Suf­fice it to say, how­ev­er, no help from the Op­po­si­tion Leader is re­quired in deal­ing with our in­ter­nal af­fairs.”