Gail Alexan­der

?Busy cam­paign­ing, UNC MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj will not ap­pear on a Ram­jack pub­lic meet­ing plat­form on Thurs­day, as UNC MP Jack Warn­er had stat­ed re­cent­ly. And UNC deputy leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, yet to speak with Warn­er, will an­nounce whether she will con­test the post of UNC po­lit­i­cal leader be­fore the end of the week. These de­vel­op­ments come in the build-up to UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tion of Jan­u­ary. UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day says he will con­test his post. Ma­haraj stat­ed last week that he would con­test the post al­so, and Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was con­sid­er­ing con­test­ing as well. Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed yes­ter­day that she was due to speak last night along­side Pan­day at a UNC Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Cou­va North, Pan­day's con­stituen­cy. "I've been meet­ing with and talk­ing to con­stituen­cies from all over the UNC. It is not con­fined to my own seat alone. I've been liv­ing on the phone and there is a lot of in­com­ing com­ment al­so via e-mail," she added.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had not spo­ken to Warn­er. Asked if she was meet­ing with Warn­er some­time this week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "I'm pre­pared to meet and con­sult with any­one, but Mr Warn­er hasn't con­tact­ed me." When Per­sad-Bisses­sar said re­cent­ly that she was con­sid­er­ing con­test­ing, Warn­er had said she was well-qual­i­fied to so do. But af­ter Ma­haraj an­nounced his lead­er­ship bid, Warn­er is­sued a state­ment, last week­end, that his Ram­jack fac­tion would work with who­ev­er is leader. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that he had said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was well-qual­i­fied and quite ca­pa­ble to lead the par­ty, Warn­er said he stood by that. He added that he had al­so sup­port­ed "my friend and po­lit­i­cal col­league Ma­haraj," who "is al­so well-qual­i­fied for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader." Warn­er had then pro­nounced, "May the best per­son win."

On Sun­day, Warn­er said his Ram­jack group was hold­ing a cot­tage meet­ing in Bam­boo No 2 last night, but Ma­haraj was not list­ed among speak­ers in the no­tice Warn­er is­sued. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj was list­ed among speak­ers at a pub­lic meet­ing the group ad­ver­tised for Thurs­day in Spring Vil­lage. Yes­ter­day, though, a spokesman for Ma­haraj point­ed out that Ma­haraj would not be on Warn­er's Thurs­day plat­form, since Ma­haraj had a heavy week of his own cam­paign meet­ings, in­clud­ing on Thurs­day. The source al­so ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any joint slate fea­tur­ing Ma­haraj and Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Nor could they con­firm that Warn­er and Ma­haraj might meet this week. Sources on the Ram­jack team said in re­cent weeks that Ma­haraj had been dis­tanced from cer­tain mem­bers of the fac­tion.

They not­ed, for in­stance, Ma­haraj's ab­sence from Warn­er's Di­vali plat­form, where COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an ap­peared. While some top-lev­el COP mem­bers are against link­ing with Ma­haraj, the lat­ter said last week that if he won the UNC lead­er­ship he would put past dif­fer­ences be­hind and seek uni­ty with COP and oth­er Op­po­si­tion par­ties. Both COP leader Dook­er­an and deputy leader Robert May­ers were un­avail­able on that is­sue yes­ter­day. So, too, was COP deputy Prakash Ra­mad­har, who has mount­ed uni­ty plat­forms with Per­sad-Bisses­sar in re­cent months. Warn­er, said to be in meet­ings yes­ter­day, was un­avail­able for com­ment. (GA)