Gail Alexan­der

For­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day is sup­port­ive of the Op­po­si­tion's no con­fi­dence mo­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and in­tends to speak in the de­bate.

But while Pan­day con­firmed his po­si­tion yes­ter­day on that is­sue, he had some scathing re­marks about sim­mer­ing UNC is­sues and crit­i­cism that has fol­lowed him since last Fri­day when his ac­tions pre­vent­ed a Par­lia­ment de­bate on for­mer Ude­cott head Calder Hart. The Op­po­si­tion filed the no con­fi­dence mo­tion against Man­ning yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Hart's res­ig­na­tion last week­end. The mo­tion, which is the Op­po­si­tion's sec­ond since 2008, is ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed in 12 days time, ac­cord­ing to Par­lia­ment es­ti­mates. Last Fri­day, the Op­po­si­tion lost an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­bate a mo­tion seek­ing Hart's re­moval, when Pan­day and UNC MP Kelvin Ram­nath re­fused to stand up and be count­ed among the UNC MPs who want­ed the is­sue de­bat­ed. The sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed COP mem­ber Gan­ga Singh – a for­mer Pan­day lieu­tenant in UNC – to claim the COP's ac­cu­sa­tion of a "Man­day Ac­cord" be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Pan­day was "jus­ti­fied."

On the up­com­ing no con­fi­dence mo­tion, Pan­day said yes­ter­day: "Cer­tain­ly, I might prob­a­bly speak on it. I hope to catch the House Speak­er's eye to be al­lowed to speak and if I don't I'll try to catch his ear. I'll be sup­port­ing the mo­tion. But that doesn't nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that I shall join the si­lence of the lambs." Re­gard­ing his views on Hart, the Cou­va North MP said he was aware the Uff re­port on Ude­cott and oth­er is­sues would be fi­nalised, "and if there is any wrong-do­ing the mat­ter will be for­ward­ed to the DPP for fur­ther ac­tion. That's the process, I don't see any rea­son why it should be dif­fer­ent in this case." Pan­day said no one from the UNC hi­er­ar­chy had con­tact­ed him about last Fri­day's in­ci­dent in Par­lia­ment. He added: "I am too old to be any­body's pup­pet. I have nev­er been any­one's pup­pet and I don't in­tend to be now. "So if my sup­port is need­ed on an is­sue, at least the cour­te­ous thing to do is to talk to me about it, which will give me an op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell them if I sup­port it or not.

"They've been cry­ing for my blood all the time, say­ing Pan­day must go and now that I've gone, they say I've gone too far and I must sup­port them? "Can't they make up their minds what they want? Pan­day is no more but where is this 'mag­net for uni­ty' they speak of. Where is the uni­ty at all?" Pan­day added: "I'm not go­ing to spend the rest of my life – which is not very long – wor­ry­ing about peo­ple who have an opin­ion on every­thing be­side them­selves.

"I will still rep­re­sent Cou­va North al­though I'm be­ing un­der­mined in my own con­stituen­cy by my own par­ty. But when peo­ple lack in­no­va­tion, they re­sort to mis­chief." On COP mem­ber Nizam Mo­hammed's warn­ing to the new UNC about mis­takes and his view that Pan­day was "wait­ing in the slips" for them, Pan­day said: "Mo­hammed's crick­et anal­o­gy is on­ly part­ly right since a lot of them will lose their wick­et by be­ing clean bowled – some of them are mak­ing such fools of them­selves." Re­gard­ing his view of one-time UNC/COP politi­cian Anand Ram­lo­gan, Pan­day said: Oh God, that speaks vol­umes."

Pan­day said it was po­et­ic jus­tice that a mem­ber of the au­di­ence at COP's con­fer­ence last Sun­day had told COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an to al­low deputy leader Prakash Ra­mad­har to lead COP in­stead. "It's po­et­ic jus­tice when they sent peo­ple to ha­rass me in UNC," Pan­day added. On Chief Whip Jack Warn­er's move to sue him (Pan­day) for state­ments, Pan­day said he hoped the truth would come out. He said he was not at­tend­ing to­day's UNC cau­cus even if Warn­er might be away.