Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' (UNC) Cou­va North con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive have aban­doned their MP–de­feat­ed UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Bas­deo Pan­day.

They have now thrown their sup­port be­hind his suc­ces­sor, Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. "We found it very dif­fi­cult to mo­bilise peo­ple for the in­ter­nal elec­tions to vote for Mr Pan­day. Al­though we trans­port­ed vot­ers to the polling sta­tions, they went and vot­ed for Kam­la," said the chair­man of Pan­day's con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive Or­lan­do Nages­sar. "Our con­science beat us to know we could not do any­thing to mo­bilise peo­ple for our Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment," he said. He said he and oth­er Cou­va North con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions yes­ter­day.

"We felt as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple to al­low Mr Pan­day to get a new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive. It was an unan­i­mous de­ci­sion to sign the let­ter (of res­ig­na­tion)," Nages­sar said. "It is a fact. It was a very ag­o­nis­ing de­ci­sion but we felt as an ex­ec­u­tive that the sit­u­a­tions that have arisen dur­ing the last few months com­pelled us to do it," he said. As the UNC launched its Meet The Con­stituents Tour yes­ter­day af­ter­noon in Cou­va North, mem­bers of Pan­day's con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive pledged their sup­port to Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the Chan­der­nagore Pres­by­ter­ian School, South­ern Main Road, Ed­in­burgh Vil­lage. At the meet­ing last night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked the Cou­va North con­stituen­cy not to re­sign. She told them to stay on as mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive.