Gail Alexan­der

"To­tal­ly un­true!" That's the word from for­mer PNM–and sub­se­quent­ly–UNC min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung on claims by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning that Kuei Tung al­leged­ly "sold out" the 1995 gen­er­al elec­tion date to the UNC. Man­ning made the claim at a PNM meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day night. How­ev­er, yes­ter­day Kuei Tung said the claim was patent­ly false. He added: "Man­ning was try­ing to give the im­pres­sion that the se­cre­cy of the date had some el­e­ment of sur­prise ad­van­tage, but that didn't hold any ad­van­tage for the UNC.

"He said Wen­dell Mot­t­ley was part of a se­cret group with whom he dis­cussed the date. But I, for one, didn't know any­thing about any elec­tion date be­cause I was busy plan­ning with the UNC against him to en­sure that what­ev­er elec­tion date he called we would have been ready." Kuei Tung added: "How­ev­er, I want to say that Patrick Man­ning's ar­ro­gance will sell him out." Asked whether he was sup­port­ing the cur­rent UNC op­po­si­tion coali­tion force, Kuei Tung said: "Very much, I'm very much be­hind the scenes." Kuei Tung is due in court again to­day to con­tin­ue fac­ing al­leged cor­rup­tion charges against him and oth­ers con­cern­ing the Pi­ar­co Air­port project built in UNC's term.

Pan­day speaks

Yes­ter­day, for­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day whose coali­tion Gov­ern­ment took over in 1995 from the PNM, said: "I don't re­mem­ber any­one sell­ing out any date to me. I had no con­tact with Kuei Tung. If he re­leased any date it was cer­tain­ly not to me at all. I can as­sure you of that." On the cur­rent UNC coali­tion, Pan­day said: "I thought when they came out they had tremen­dous sup­port and were rid­ing on a wave but I think that wave has peaked and is now sub­sid­ing.

"We're still get­ting a lot of calls from peo­ple on the ground say­ing they won't vote be­cause of the vin­dic­tive­ness of the par­ty in not putting Mick­ela (Pan­day) and oth­ers back." He added: "Peo­ple see this as an act of vi­cious­ness and are won­der­ing–as I have said–whether they will be vin­dic­tive like this if they get in­to pow­er. Peo­ple no­tice things you know. This elec­torate is very in­formed."