Gail Alexan­der

UNC MPs Gan­ga Singh, Fuad Khan and Fazal Karim were miss­ing from last Sun­day’s UNC an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions—as well as UNC founder Bas­deo Pan­day who had been in­vit­ed to the event.

UNC deputy leader David Lee con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the Cou­va cel­e­bra­tion.

Dur­ing UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­niver­sary ad­dress, she’d al­lud­ed to Pan­day and oth­ers who helped build UNC.

She’d said, “This is our time to lead by ex­am­ple and to ho­n­our our found­ing fa­thers and our first leader, Bas­deo Pan­day and all those who have laboured over the last 30 years on be­half of our par­ty.”

Lee said Pan­day had been in­vit­ed, but there’d been no re­sponse from him. He said the par­ty had al­so in­vit­ed past MPs and of­fi­cials.

But Lee couldn’t say how many of those ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion, though he not­ed for­mer chair­man Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram did.

Pan­day didn’t re­ply to re­peat­ed calls yes­ter­day. Nor was there re­ply from his daugh­ter Mick­ela Pan­day’s cell phone.

Lee con­firmed Singh, Khan and Karim had al­so missed the event since they were over­seas.

Singh said he’d been do­ing a com­plete med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion. Khan said he’d been at­tend­ing a med­ical ex­po in Las Ve­gas. Karim did not an­swer.

Khan said, “From what I hear the cel­e­bra­tion was a suc­cess, so it’s now on to vic­to­ry—no I’m not be­ing sar­cas­tic. Pro­posed changes (by the EBC) for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ar­eas will make it hard­er for us in my area, but not for gen­er­al elec­tions.”

“How­ev­er, I do feel we should have more fo­rums where UNC MPs can re­port to the pub­lic on what they’ve done. The Mon­day Night Fo­rums don’t have room for that.”

Khan al­so said he’d not­ed that for­mer PP Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath last week start­ed out­reach meet­ings. “I wish him well. Cur­rent­ly, our lead­er­ship has made a de­ci­sion on not talk­ing to any­one (about link­ing) so he has his place. I see COP leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan has al­so start­ed to make some noise and that means an­oth­er par­ty (COP) is rais­ing its head.”

Khan said he’d at­tend any meet­ing Bharath chose to in­vite him to. He said, “He’s my friend, I’d talk on his plat­form. There’s no rea­son I shouldn’t since he’s not form­ing a par­ty and I’m not chang­ing sides from UNC.”

Yes­ter­day, Bharath said he didn’t at­tend Sun­day’s UNC event or see it on tele­vi­sion.

Last Fri­day, in San Fer­nan­do, Bharath launched a se­ries of out­reach meet­ings to as­cer­tain how peo­ple felt about the po­lit­i­cal land­scape. Bharath said yes­ter­day he’d in­vit­ed 40 peo­ple but 140 turned up and he was very en­cour­aged by the re­sponse. He and for­mer PN­Mite Louis Lee Sing ad­dressed the gath­er­ing.

Bharath is ex­pect­ed to meet peo­ple in St Au­gus­tine next week. Bharath, non-com­mit­tal on form­ing any en­ti­ty, said as meet­ings con­tin­ue over com­ing months, he and oth­ers in­volved in the ef­fort would “see where” the ef­fort is head­ing.

Lee said the UNC had re­served a seat in its VIP tent last Sun­day for Bharath, but he didn’t show. “We read on the Guardian where he said he might have at­tend­ed so we had a seat for him, but he didn’t come.”

Lee said he’d re­ceived an in­vi­ta­tion to Bharath’s meet­ing last Fri­day but didn’t at­tend it, “No, I don’t think his meet­ings will make a dent in (UNC’s sup­port),” Lee added.