Fran­cis Joseph

Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has put a sound lick­ing on her two ri­vals to be­come the new leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). In the process, she be­came the first woman to be­come the leader of a ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Al­though re­sults were trick­ling in at UNC head­quar­ters at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was clear in the lead in most of the 28 polling sta­tions. Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er was al­so head­ing for a land­slide vic­to­ry against St Au­gus­tine MP Vas­ant Bharath.

Just be­fore 9 pm, one of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ri­vals, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, con­ced­ed de­feat and con­grat­u­lat­ed her. At a news con­fer­ence at St Mary's Junc­tion in Freeport, Ma­haraj thanked his cam­paign team, and said he was pre­pared to work with the new ex­ec­u­tive. But the in­cum­bent po­lit­i­cal leader, Bas­deo Pan­day, de­cid­ed to re­main at his home at Bryans Gate, Phillip­ines, rather than go to Rien­zi Com­plex to con­cede de­feat. Dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3 last night, Pan­day said he would not con­cede de­feat, say­ing it was not a mat­ter for him­self alone.

He said he was not emo­tion­al at the de­feat. "Why should I be emo­tion­al? I don't have to be emo­tion­al at any­thing. I have done a job to the best of my abil­i­ty, why should I have any re­grets?" he said. Pan­day, who formed the UNC in 1989, felt that the UNC would be stronger af­ter yes­ter­day's in­ter­nal elec­tions. Asked what he was do­ing last night, Pan­day said he was hav­ing fun, an­swer­ing his e-mails. There was cel­e­bra­tion in Pe­nal last night as hun­dreds turned out to greet the new leader of the UNC. It caused a traf­fic con­ges­tion, with mo­torists honk­ing their horns.