Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has stressed that col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween a mem­ber of the for­mer UNC Gov­ern­ment and the then Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) forced the UNC to lose con­trol of the Gov­ern­ment in 2001. She re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that the UNC was put in Op­po­si­tion be­cause she failed to ad­vise then Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day against let­ting then Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son se­lect the po­lit­i­cal par­ty to form the Gov­ern­ment in 2001 af­ter a tie be­tween the PNM and UNC in that year's gen­er­al elec­tion.

Robin­son in­vit­ed the PNM to form the Gov­ern­ment, and re­turned the UNC to the Op­po­si­tion. "Peo­ple are not fool­ish. Peo­ple un­der­stand ful­ly well why we lost the Gov­ern­ment and it is be­cause 'done deals' were made with oth­ers out­side the UNC to bring down the UNC," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. "It has noth­ing to do with the rea­sons be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed by per­sons. We lost the Gov­ern­ment be­cause done deals were made with the PNM by those with­in the UNC," she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was re­spond­ing to state­ments from UNC dis­si­dent Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj that she should have used her pow­ers as then at­tor­ney gen­er­al to bet­ter guide Pan­day and the UNC to re­main in pow­er. Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, had he been the at­tor­ney gen­er­al, he would have told Pan­day to call a gen­er­al elec­tion in six months. Ma­haraj added that it was "Kam­la, who was the AG, who sat there and al­lowed her Prime Min­is­ter to be mis­led."