Cather­ine Copeland

It was amid thun­der­ous ap­plause from her con­stituents that Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, made her an­nounce­ment to con­test for lead­er­ship of the par­ty in Jan­u­ary 2010. She spoke from her con­stituen­cy of­fice in Pe­nal yes­ter­day af­ter­noon say­ing: "The de­ci­sion I had to make was the most dif­fi­cult I have ever had to make. This elec­tion is the most im­por­tant we are hav­ing in the two decades in our life as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. It took a tremen­dous amount of pain to get this point. Mr. Bas­deo Pan­day will nev­er dis­ap­pear and he must not, he has giv­en too much to us in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "I asked my­self over and over again whether my du­ty was to per­son­al and dear friend­ships or to our na­tion. I had to re­flect on the mes­sage in the scrip­ture to re­solve the in­ter­nal con­flict and to con­sid­er the wis­dom of the philoso­phers who have ar­gued that it is best to pur­sue a path that of­fers the great­est good to the great­est num­ber. And so I am pleased to tell you that with the great­est hu­mil­i­ty I will stand as a can­di­date for the lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on Jan­u­ary 24, 2010." When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, cur­rent UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day said: "This is ex­act­ly why we have a con­sti­tu­tion so that any per­son with good fi­nan­cial stand­ing can con­test any ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion in the par­ty."

UNC Siparia in­vites Ramesh to Sun­day lunch

UNC core group mem­bers and Siparia con­stituents have in­vit­ed Ramesh Ma­haraj to a work­ing lunch to­day, to dis­cuss his role in the fu­ture of the par­ty and the up­com­ing elec­tions. The pub­lic dis­cus­sion, to which the me­dia is al­so in­vit­ed, will be held at 599 Pe­nal Rock Road, com­menc­ing at 1pm.

Re­spons­es

Jack: Some­one will with­draw

Ch­agua­nas West MP and UNC fi­nancier, Jack Warn­er, yes­ter­day praised the de­ci­sion by his Siparia col­league Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to of­fer her­self for the lead­er­ship of the par­ty. Warn­er pre­dict­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment yes­ter­day "will have a pro­found and pos­i­tive im­pact on this coun­try in ways that we can't imag­ine at this point." "What Kam­la has done by her de­ci­sion to fight for the lead­er­ship of the UNC is bring women with­in the pale of the po­lit­i­cal par­a­digm. She has changed the po­lit­i­cal par­a­digm and giv­en women their po­lit­i­cal space. She has giv­en space to women from the rur­al ar­eas. "I com­mend the la­dy high­ly for her guts and her com­mit­ment to coun­try."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to con­test the po­si­tion of UNC po­lit­i­cal leader at the par­ty's Jan­u­ary in­ter­nal elec­tion means that the con­test has be­come a three-way race. Tabaquite MP Ramesh Ma­haraj an­nounced that he was run­ning last week while UNC po­lit­i­cal leader, Bas­deo Pan­day, has al­so in­di­cat­ed that he wished to con­tin­ue lead­ing the op­po­si­tion par­ty. Warn­er pre­dict­ed that one of the three con­tes­tants for the UNC lead­er­ship would with­draw from the race mak­ing it a two-way bat­tle. Al­though he de­clined to say which of the three would drop out of the race, Warn­er said: "I would be pre­pared to say more on this is­sue when I an­nounce this week where my sup­port would be."

Warn­er said he did not be­lieve Kam­la would be the lead­er­ship as­pi­rant who would with­draw. "I don't be­lieve Kam­la will drop out. She has de­lib­er­at­ed long and hard on her de­ci­sion to fight for the lead­er­ship. Hav­ing made the de­ci­sion, she will walk the walk," he said. Warn­er al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the bat­tle for the UNC lead­er­ship to the fu­ture of the coun­try. "I owe it to my con­stituents, and more so to the peo­ple of T&T, to take a pub­lic stance on this mat­ter and I will do so be­cause this is much more than an UNC elec­tion for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. This is an elec­tion for the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of T&T."

Win­ston Dook­er­an

, leader of the COP, gave his sup­port to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"I com­pli­ment Kam­la for de­cid­ing to of­fer her­self. It will be good for the pol­i­tics in the coun­try and I look for­ward to the plat­form which she will of­fer the na­tion."

Po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad:

"It's good to see democ­ra­cy is alive and kick­ing. If Kam­la does win the par­ty elec­tions, both the PNM and COP will be faced with new chal­lenges. Kam­la could com­mand se­ri­ous sup­port in the 2121 Gen­er­al Elec­tion as there are many dis­en­chant­ed UNC, COP and PNM sup­port­ers who may be seek­ing an al­ter­na­tive.