Richard Lord

None of the 16,000 peo­ple who ap­plied for mem­ber­ship in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) with­in the past two months will be el­i­gi­ble to vote in the par­ty's elec­tions on Jan­u­ary 24. This was re­vealed by chair­man of the UNC's mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee, Cou­va South MP Kelvin Ram­nath, in an in­ter­view fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's meet­ing at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va. Ram­nath said: "It was hu­mane­ly im­pos­si­ble to process 16,000 ap­pli­ca­tions in such a short pe­ri­od. And as a re­sult we have de­cid­ed on­ly the 34,000 reg­is­tered mem­bers in No­vem­ber 2009, the date of the last Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, will be el­i­gi­ble to vote." When con­tact­ed for com­ment on that de­vel­op­ment, Pan­day said: "That was a mat­ter for the mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee, not me."

UNC sources said the de­ci­sion was ex­pect­ed to be rat­i­fied at a na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing. No date for that meet­ing has been an­nounced. Since the an­nounce­ment of the elec­tion date, two of the three sit­ting deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, Jack Warn­er and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, have en­gaged in mem­ber­ship mo­bil­i­sa­tion ex­er­cis­es. When in­formed of the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was "shock­ing." She said there was no ba­sis for re­ject­ing 16,000 new mem­bers. "If it is true that the in­ten­tion is to re­ly on the ex­ist­ing list of mem­bers, then it will mean the mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee has done no work what­so­ev­er be­cause that list was avail­able by No­vem­ber 29," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. The Siparia MP was crit­i­cal of Ram­nath, say­ing he had pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en a com­mit­ment to com­plete the process in time for the elec­tions.

"I am deeply con­cerned about this (de­vel­op­ment) be­cause it de­nies cit­i­zens the le­git­i­mate right to join a par­ty of their choice," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. She added while the UNC has the right to re­ject a mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tion, it was un­prece­dent­ed that all new ap­pli­ca­tions would be tossed out. "This goes against the UNC's ba­sic prin­ci­ple of em­brac­ing all," she said. She called for the mat­ter to be re­con­sid­ered. Warn­er said he was not of­fi­cial­ly in­formed of the de­ci­sion. He asked: "What ca­bal, what clique would have tak­en that de­ci­sion? Was it Bas­deo Pan­day, Mick­ela Pan­day, Sub­has Pan­day, Vas­ant Pan­day, Wade Pan­day, Dr Hamza Pan­day or Dr Roodal Pan­day?" Warn­er said he in­tend­ed to chal­lenge the de­ci­sion be­cause it was il­le­gal. He said: "If Pan­day dis­fran­chised all the vot­ers and left on­ly ten, he will still lose."