Ken Ali

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Bas­deo Pan­day is up­set over the de­ci­sion of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to take part in the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's (COP) "Axe the Tax" ral­ly this week­end.

Pan­day ex­pressed his an­noy­ance yes­ter­day, stat­ing pub­licly that Per­sad-Bisses­sar had not sought per­mis­sion of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to ad­dress the pub­lic meet­ing at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain. The "mat­ter was not dis­cussed" by the UNC's ex­ec­u­tive, Pan­day said in an in­ter­view on The Morn­ing Pan­chay­at on 106.1 FM. As a re­sult, he said the par­ty had no of­fi­cial po­si­tion on par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ral­ly. Ques­tioned about Per­sad-Bisses­sar's in­volve­ment in the meet­ing, Pan­day re­tort­ed: "You would have to ask her about that."

The veiled crit­i­cism ap­peared to con­firm pre­vail­ing re­ports that the UNC boss has been un­hap­py about the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Siparia, over sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal mat­ters. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had been wide­ly re­port­ed as a plat­form speak­er at the event. Fol­low­ing Pan­day's state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar moved quick­ly to with­draw from the ral­ly, say­ing in a sub­se­quent in­ter­view that she had ini­tial­ly de­cid­ed to at­tend a cou­ple weeks ago, "when cir­cum­stances were dif­fer­ent."

Since then, she said, she had been at St Kitts, han­dling a le­gal mat­ter. She re­turned to find that the COP had mount­ed an un­re­lent­ing war against Pan­day for his meet­ing last week with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to Prakash Ra­mad­har, deputy leader of the COP and ral­ly or­gan­is­er, back­ing out of the meet­ing. Vas­ant Bharath, said that "dis­cus­sions should not be pur­sued at this time. We feel trust has been be­trayed."