Sascha Wil­son

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters is call­ing on chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee, Kelvin Ram­nath, to re­sign. He made the call in light of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the elec­tion list and the ap­pli­ca­tions for new mem­bers with just over two weeks be­fore the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tions on Jan­u­ary 24. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Pe­ters said: "He (Ram­nath) is chair­man of the mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee and I don't know what the prob­lem is with him.

"Could you imag­ine we sup­pose to have the names of reg­is­tered per­sons since Sun­day or Sat­ur­day and we can­not have it yet?" Pe­ters said ini­tial­ly Ram­nath said there were 10,000 new mem­bers, then it went to 11,000 and now it is at 16,000. He said the dead­line for sub­mit­ting mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tions was on De­cem­ber 18, 2009. He added: "Where did all of these new peo­ple come from af­ter reg­is­tra­tion close? This is gross in­com­pe­tence.

There are too many in­ef­fi­cien­cies and in­con­sis­ten­cies. He needs to re­sign," said Pe­ters, who is sup­port­ing Siparia Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in her fight for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader. How­ev­er, Pe­ters claimed that was a strat­e­gy be­ing used to rig or post­pone the elec­tions. Re­spond­ing to com­ments made by in­cum­bent po­lit­i­cal leader Bas­deo Pan­day at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Tues­day night that elec­tions would not be post­poned, he said: "He too wants it (elec­tions) to be post­poned." Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Ram­nath said it was a non-is­sue and he had more im­por­tant things to deal with than take on Pe­ters.