Shas­tri Boodan

One month af­ter her vic­to­ry in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions, new po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is poised to be­come the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

Ad­dress­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she planned to dis­patch a let­ter to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards lat­er to­day an­nounc­ing she has the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port among Op­po­si­tion MPs. Eight MPs, in­clud­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar, have so far signed in favour of her. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there should be no change in the seat­ing arrange­ments when the Low­er House meets lat­er to­day un­less some­one "vol­un­tary" re­lo­cates. How­ev­er, she ex­pect­ed that by Fri­day she should be in the seat that is cur­rent­ly held by Bas­deo Pan­day, the Cou­va North MP. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day's Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus was filled with healthy, can­did and open dis­cus­sion on the mat­ter of the Op­po­si­tion Leader po­si­tion but more par­tic­u­lar on the way for­ward for the par­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss a way to pay trib­ute to Pan­day for his con­tri­bu­tion.

When asked how, she said: "You can­not pay trib­ute to some­one who does not wish trib­ute to be paid to, so cer­tain­ly we will have to as­cer­tain Mr Pan­day would be so will­ing." How­ev­er, she made it clear that the UNC was not plan­ning any ex­it strat­e­gy for Pan­day who she said was an elect­ed MP who con­tin­ued to rep­re­sent the peo­ple of his con­stituen­cy. She added: "He is still a mem­ber of the UNC and I have no doubt he will con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the par­ty. "On the is­sue of an ex­it strat­e­gy we are pro­ceed­ing on a false premise on a false as­sump­tion that Mr Pan­day would be ex­it­ing.

"Un­til I am told oth­er­wise, I am not of the view that Mr Pan­day would be in such ex­it-mode at all." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she has not spo­ken with Pan­day. As to why some MPs did not show up for yes­ter­day's meet­ing, she said the par­ty's gen­er­al sec­re­tary re­ceived an e-mail around 2.20 pm from Ramesh Ma­haraj, but was un­able to read it. She said Kelvin Ram­nath sent and e-mail on Mon­day list­ing his con­cerns about the meet­ing held in his con­stituen­cy on Mon­day night. She said that meet­ing was planned some­time ago. St Au­gus­tine MP Vas­ant Bharath did not at­tend the cau­cus, say­ing that he had to at­tend a fu­ner­al in­stead.

Op­po­si­tion di­vide

Kam­la's camp:

1. Roodal Mooni­lal

2. Jack Warn­er

3. Win­ston Pe­ters

4. Nizam Baksh

5. Tim Gopeesingh

6. Har­ry Par­tap

7. Chan­dresh Shar­ma

Bas' peo­ple:

1. Ramesh Ma­haraj

2. Kelvin Ram­nath

3. Mick­ela Pan­day

4. Sub­has Pan­day

Vas­ant Bharath... in lim­bo

Hamza Rafeeq... out of the coun­try