Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has chal­lenged the po­lit­i­cal leader of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to call an im­me­di­ate elec­tion.

She said top mem­bers of the UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive were man­dat­ed to cre­ate a pro­pos­al for strength­en­ing and unit­ing the UNC for it to be­come the next gov­ern­ment. She al­so said that the UNC would so­lic­it sup­port from oth­er op­po­si­tion forces to beat the PNM af­ter the UNC had bet­ter sta­bilised its foun­da­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar thrashed Man­ning and his regime for squan­der­ing bil­lions of dol­lars, rather than im­prov­ing the stan­dard and qual­i­ty of liv­ing among the pop­u­la­tion of T&T. She ex­pressed dis­gust that Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt would use a tele­vised ad­dress to the na­tion to in­di­cate his ac­cep­tance of an er­ror in mount­ing a na­tion­al flag at a cost of about $2 mil­lion. "I saw Min­is­ter Gary Hunt last (Sun­day) night on the tele­vi­sion, apol­o­gis­ing for the $2 mil­lion flag...He said it was the wrong thing to do," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "Mr Hunt, that is not good enough. The en­tire gov­ern­ment needs to apol­o­gise and you need to call an elec­tion now so that we can move you out of of­fice now."

She point­ed out that a ca­lyp­so called De Flag Hunter per­formed by Win­ston Scar­bor­ough, who used the so­bri­quet "The Orig­i­nal De Fos­to Him­self," was a pop­u­lar hit at the UNC's Peo­ple's Par­ty at Rien­zi Com­plex last Sat­ur­day, be­cause of the out­rage that the two-mil­lion-dol­lar-flag was able to gen­er­ate. Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that much of the is­sues raised at the UNC's Cou­va North launch of its "Meet The Con­stituents Tour" on Mon­day night stemmed from the break­down in ba­sic gov­ern­ment func­tions, such as the de­liv­ery of health­care, prop­er in­fra­struc­ture and sta­ble sup­plies of pub­lic util­i­ties, like wa­ter. "The is­sues clear­ly point, demon­strate (and) show why we must form the next gov­ern­ment of T&T," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "The on­ly way to rec­ti­fy those ma­jor prob­lems is to re­move the Man­ning regime and form the next gov­ern­ment and put good gov­ern­ment prac­tices in our land." She em­pha­sised the need for UNC mem­bers to march unit­ed and strong. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would be un­able to ac­cept the res­ig­na­tions of mem­bers of for­mer UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Bas­deo Pan­day's Cou­va North con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive be­cause she need­ed them "to con­tin­ue to serve the par­ty as best as they can."

Mem­bers of Pan­day's Cou­va North con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive agreed over the week­end to aban­don him and sup­port Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her lead­er­ship of the UNC.