Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Jack Warn­er has been so­lic­it­ing oth­er Op­po­si­tion MPs to sup­port the UNC's new po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for the po­si­tion of Op­po­si­tion Leader in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Warn­er said Op­po­si­tion MPs aligned to the de­feat­ed UNC po­lit­i­cal leader, Bas­deo Pan­day, were in­vit­ed to unite and back calls for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­place Pan­day as Op­po­si­tion Leader. "I have spo­ken to some MPs, some of whom have agreed to go along with Mrs Bisses­sar but I be­lieve the bet­ter thing would have been for Mr Pan­day, of his own ini­tia­tive, to re­lin­quish the post and there­fore I will first wait and see what he is do­ing," Warn­er said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Trinidad Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. Sec­tion 83 of T&T's Con­sti­tu­tion states that the Pres­i­dent can ap­point the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion based on his judg­ment about who com­mand­ed the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of Op­po­si­tion mem­bers. At present, four Op­po­si­tion MPs pledged their sup­port to Per­sad-Bisses­sar. They were Warn­er (Ch­agua­nas West MP), Win­ston Pe­ters (Ma­yaro MP), Har­ry Par­tap (Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP) and Nizam Baksh (Na­pari­ma MP).

Sources al­so in­di­cat­ed Dr Tim Gopeesingh (Ca­roni East MP) and Chan­dresh Shar­ma (Fyz­abad MP) al­so of­fered their sup­port to Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Calls to Per­sad-Bisses­sar went unan­swered. Pan­day has de­clared it was not un­usu­al for the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to not hold the po­si­tion of Op­po­si­tion Leader in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Pan­day said it would not be the first time sep­a­rate per­sons in the UNC held the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader and Op­po­si­tion Leader. "That is quite pos­si­ble. When Kam­la (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) was Op­po­si­tion Leader, Win­ston Dook­er­an was po­lit­i­cal leader so that is not wrong, that is per­fect­ly al­right," Pan­day said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. "They are two sep­a­rate func­tions. As po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty, your busi­ness is with the par­ty. As Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, my busi­ness is with the Par­lia­ment." Pan­day re­it­er­at­ed his fate as Op­po­si­tion Leader de­pend­ed on the mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion. "If nine mem­bers want me, I will re­main there, yes. It is not a ques­tion of want­i­ng to, if nine mem­bers want me to serve, I will," he said.

"Whether I re­main as Op­po­si­tion Leader or not de­pends on the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. They are the ones who have to write the Pres­i­dent and say, 'look, we want some­body else.'" On April 25, 2006, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards re­voked Pan­day's ap­point­ment as Op­po­si­tion Leader af­ter Pan­day was con­vict­ed of fraud for fail­ing to dis­close a Lon­don bank ac­count ac­cord­ing to the In­tegri­ty Act. One day af­ter, sev­en UNC MPs an­nounced their sup­port of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for Op­po­si­tion Leader. She was ap­point­ed to the post on April 27 and agreed to step down from the po­si­tion fol­low­ing Pan­day's suc­cess­ful ap­peal of his con­vic­tion.

Al­though Per­sad-Bisses­sar was made Op­po­si­tion Leader, Win­ston Dook­er­an was the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC at the time. It was a po­si­tion he held from Oc­to­ber 2, 2005. Break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Dook­er­an was made ev­i­dent in the Oc­to­ber 2006 de­bate on the na­tion­al bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that came to a pre­ma­ture end af­ter poor co-or­di­naa­tion among Op­po­si­tion mem­bers re­sult­ed in no mem­ber mak­ing fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions in the de­bate.