Long­time UNC stal­wart and com­men­ta­tor Robin Mon­tano has been crit­i­cal of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC’s) leader stay­ing on the job and the UNC’s Ra­bindra Moo­nan has al­so frowned on any vote of con­fi­dence be­ing giv­en to a “se­r­i­al los­er.”

Theirs are the lat­est in con­tin­u­ing com­ments on the UNC’s lead­er­ship is­sue fol­low­ing the par­ty’s de­feat by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in last Mon­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

While par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who won her seat, is stand­ing firm with sup­port from some Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs), re­cent­ly per­son­al­i­ties with­in and with­out the par­ty, in­clud­ing an­a­lysts be­lieve she should step down.

Com­ment­ing on the elec­tion out­come, at­tor­ney Mon­tano said in his blog, “We have the rather glar­ing ab­sence of lead­er­ship in the UNC. That par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader has been miss­ing in ac­tion with oth­ers fill­ing in for her. Oh! We have had some press re­leas­es in her name, but she has not ap­peared in pub­lic since last Mon­day night. Now, I’ve said it be­fore  and I’ll say it again: the on­ly test for lead­er­ship is to lead, and to lead vig­or­ous­ly.”

“At a time when the fol­low­ers and sup­port­ers of the UNC are un­der­stand­ably up­set over the way things have turned out, she has been silent pre­fer­ring to is­sue press re­leas­es and ef­fec­tive­ly to hide be­hind her of­fi­cials and sup­port­ers.”

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s very hes­i­tan­cy to ap­pear in pub­lic has led to calls from var­i­ous el­e­ments with­in her own par­ty to step aside. Es­sen­tial­ly, these calls can be summed up as fol­lows: lead, fol­low, or get out of the way. She has so far failed to lead and she cer­tain­ly isn’t fol­low­ing any­one. So that means that she should, for both her par­ty’s and her coun­try’s sake, get out of the way.”

Moo­nan was a for­mer UNC sen­a­tor, for­mer Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) chair­man and for­mer HDC chair­man un­der the PP Gov­ern­ment. He al­so post­ed com­ments on the lead­er­ship is­sues.

Moo­nan stat­ed, “I read with great in­ter­est an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Dr Hamid Ghany en­ti­tled ‘Lead­er­ship and elec­tions’. In a rather painstak­ing com­men­tary Dr Ghany con­clud­ed that the ev­i­dence in T&T has shown that it is not the norm for lead­ers of par­ties to re­sign their lead­er­ship po­si­tions un­less they have lost their seats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

“It is this con­clu­sion which Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took from the ar­ti­cle and which she glee­ful­ly post­ed on her Face book page, obliv­i­ous to what Dr Ghany had not writ­ten. Dr Ghany ex­plained that Bas­deo Pan­day served as leader of the Op­po­si­tion on six oc­ca­sions but did not say when he lost as Prime Min­is­ter, he was chal­lenged by the very Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who is on record of ex­pos­ing his loss­es and vir­tu­al­ly call­ing for his re­moval.”

“Dr Ghany, to his cred­it, did not men­tion the two con­sec­u­tive loss­es of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she moved the par­ty from 431,000 votes and 28 seats to a hu­mil­i­at­ing 330,000 votes and a measly 18 seats. He did not have the time to men­tion her last vote count of 309,000 votes; a con­tin­u­ing down­ward slide. Dr Ghany mer­ci­ful­ly did not ex­pose the oth­er mul­ti­tude of loss­es Mrs Bisses­sar suf­fered af­ter be­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter in 2010, her clos­est to vic­to­ry be­ing a draw in the last Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. It has to be a mor­bid sense of hu­mor which will cause cer­tain mem­bers of the UNC to give a vote of con­fi­dence to a se­r­i­al los­er.”