Gail Alexan­der

UNC founder Bas­deo Pan­day says he will in­de­pen­dent­ly con­test the Ch­agua­nas West seat held by UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er. "Hav­ing in­flict­ed Warn­er on the coun­try, it is now my job to get rid of him...that will be my new role," Pan­day said. He said he would file nom­i­na­tion pa­pers to con­test Ch­agua­nas West when nom­i­na­tion day for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion ar­rives. Pan­day made the state­ment when asked to com­ment on UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar's claim on Tues­day that she had a "role" for him. He said his in­de­pen­dent elec­tion cam­paign in Ch­agua­nas West would not fo­cus on the UNC, but on Warn­er.

"I will to­tal­ly sup­port the UNC and the leader and every­one else, but I will be fo­cus­ing on Warn­er...that is the on­ly way I can sup­port my par­ty and rid T&T of per­sons like Warn­er," Pan­day added. Not­ing that Warn­er had been giv­en the "safe" Ch­agua­nas West seat by the UNC un­der his lead­er­ship, Pan­day said: "I will not be par­ty to in­flict­ing Warn­er on this so­ci­ety. I have been guilty of in­flict­ing him, there­fore it is my du­ty to re­move the af­flic­tion."

Pan­day said that los­ing the seat–held by Warn­er since 2007–was not rel­e­vant. "I'm sure I will win, since Ch­agua­nas West was part of my old Cou­va North con­stituen­cy," he said. "The peo­ple will de­cide whether they want to have some­one like Warn­er. There­fore, I plan to put in my nom­i­na­tion for Ch­agua­nas West on Nom­i­na­tion Day be­cause I am sure every­one in the UNC will be scared if he is made Fi­nance Min­is­ter." Pan­day said he had been get­ting a lot of calls from Ch­agua­nas West on the sit­u­a­tion and he was con­fi­dent he had the back­ing to con­test. (GA)