Gail Alexan­der

?PNM Low­er House leader Colm Im­bert says there is a "grey area" con­cern­ing the pow­ers of the Op­po­si­tion Leader and po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC in the Par­lia­ment. Im­bert made the point at a me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day, while speak­ing about a UNC mo­tion which the UNC vot­ed against. On the is­sue of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Im­bert said he had not­ed that House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan had recog­nised the de­ci­sion by new UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ap­point Jack Warn­er as UNC chief whip re­cent­ly. Warn­er re­placed for­mer whip Hamza Rafeeq. Im­bert said, how­ev­er, that in Bar­ba­dos, a sit­u­a­tion had ex­ist­ed where the Op­po­si­tion leader and po­lit­i­cal leader of the op­po­si­tion par­ty there were not the same peo­ple.

He not­ed that Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter David Thomp­son had been Op­po­si­tion Leader in that sce­nario. There­fore, Im­bert said there is grey area on the mat­ter where the T&T op­po­si­tion is­sue was con­cerned. Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan said he was con­tin­u­ing to deal with the sit­u­a­tion as it cur­rent­ly ex­ists–with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's man­dates. Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day said it was true that there have been sit­u­a­tions in the re­gion–in­clud­ing in T&T–where par­ties have an Op­po­si­tion Leader and po­lit­i­cal leader who are dif­fer­ent in­di­vid­u­als. "We had it right here in T&T in 2006, when Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was Op­po­si­tion Leader and Win­ston Dook­er­an was UNC leader at the time," Pan­day said.

On le­gal ac­tion which was ini­tial­ly hint­ed by some MPs, Pan­day said, "I'm not go­ing to take any­one to court, I'll just let them wal­low in their mess." Pan­day said UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar should iden­ti­fy those UNC MPs who she claimed sup­port her for the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader, in­clud­ing the per­son she claimed was "over­seas." "Or else she'll just be mis­lead­ing the na­tion and tar­nish­ing the names of all the MPs if she does not say specif­i­cal­ly who is sup­port­ing her. But I'm not sur­prised by the whole thing since that is Jack Warn­er's style," he added. (GA)