Gail Alexan­der

As UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gets set to as­sume the Op­po­si­tion Leader's chair in Par­lia­ment to­mor­row, out­go­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day blanked yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment ses­sion–leav­ing the chair va­cant.

"I left (the chair) va­cant as they want to oc­cu­py it," Pan­day said, dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. The chair in Par­lia­ment that Pan­day oc­cu­pied since 2002 in his most re­cent stint as Op­po­si­tion Leader was no­tice­ably emp­ty yes­ter­day, be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and UNC chief whip Jack Warn­er. Af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar fi­nal­ly se­cured the nec­es­sary ma­jor­i­ty sup­port from MPs to ob­tain the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader, MPs Jack Warn­er and Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day left the Par­lia­ment at 2.30 pm to take a let­ter to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards on the planned change. Sig­na­tures on the let­ter were from MPs Har­ry Par­tap, Nizam Baksh, Win­ston Pe­ters, Jack Warn­er, Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Roodal Mooni­lal and Tim Gopeesingh. Pan­day, who has func­tioned as Op­po­si­tion Leader at dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods in po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry since 1976, said yes­ter­day that he had not yet packed up and moved out of the Op­po­si­tion Leader's of­fice. "I have not been in­formed of any change," he added.

Pan­day said he did not at­tend yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment ses­sion since, he said, "I'm giv­ing them a chance to sort them­selves out." Per­sad-Bisses­sar at Tues­day's UNC cau­cus for­malised plans to place Pan­day to her left when she takes the Op­po­si­tion Leader's seat to­mor­row. The de­ci­sion on seat­ing was an­nounced at the cau­cus. Asked yes­ter­day if he would agree to sit­ting at Per­sad-Bisses­sar's left, Pan­day said: "I don't know where they will put me...on the front bench or the back–or the Red House steps. I don't know. I don't know what is in their mind...I do know that I find it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to work un­der a chief whip who has re­fused to ac­count for mil­lions of dol­lars he had re­ceived on be­half of the UNC. "But this par­ty has had 20 years of my blood, sweat and tears, and I will not let any in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tor take it over, yet I fear the UNC will mash up over the next six months and dis­in­te­grate."

Pan­day said he would not be in­volved in that and he had no plans to form a new par­ty. He said he was cu­ri­ous about the COP's planned uni­ty meet­ing on March 7 with par­ty lead­ers and hoped it would not mean that all the UNC had achieved over the years would be "giv­en away" at that meet­ing. On his mood as to­mor­row's Par­lia­ment changes loom, Pan­day said he was very "re­laxed and very re­lieved." At yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment ses­sion, UNC MPs were in brisk mode be­fore the ses­sion, watched in­tent­ly by PNM MPs who gave some of them pi­cong. Dur­ing de­bate, Mooni­lal hud­dled in con­ver­sa­tion with Tim Gopeesingh and Vas­ant Bharath, while MPs Sub­has Pan­day and Mikela Pan­day–who did not sign the let­ter of sup­port– sat iso­lat­ed.