Shal­iza Has­sanali

The find­ings of Nac­ta's on­go­ing track­ing sur­vey on the UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tions has re­vealed that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to win the par­ty's lead­er­ship by a land­slide vic­to­ry based on sup­port she has been re­ceiv­ing from non-UNC sup­port­ers. This has cre­at­ed some mea­sure of anx­i­ety among mem­bers, who fear that the par­ty could be dis­solved should the Siparia MP beat the in­cum­bent leader Bas­deo Pan­day, who is fac­ing his biggest chal­lenge in this month's elec­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the poll stat­ed, pos­es a big­ger threat in de­pos­ing Bas as a re­sult of the strong sup­port she has gar­nered from non-UNC sup­port­ers who have suc­ceed­ed in ob­tain­ing mem­ber­ship in the UNC with the de­fined goal of force­ful­ly re­tir­ing Pan­day and Ramesh from the coun­try's pol­i­tics.

The poll finds that in­di­vid­u­als who hold dual mem­ber­ship in UNC and COP ac­count for near­ly half of Kam­la's sup­port for the UNC lead­er­ship post. These num­bers are like­ly to rise as pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tions from in­di­vid­u­als who say they are COP af­fil­i­ates and show­ing pref­er­ence for Kam­la, are processed and giv­en the right to vote. The find­ings are ob­tained from in­ter­views of 478 in­di­vid­u­als who de­scribed them­selves as sup­port­ers of UNC or COP and al­so mem­bers of UNC. "Kam­la is ex­pect­ed to tri­umph with a land­slide vic­to­ry be­cause the poll finds that COP sup­port­ers are high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed to come out and vote Kam­la and the COP ma­chin­ery has gone in­to high gear to elect Kam­la as leader of the UNC," the poll stat­ed.�While Per­sad-Bisses­sar has wide ap­peal among COP mem­bers, the polled ex­plained she lacked po­lit­i­cal savvy and tough­ness to en­gage the PNM in a gen­er­al elec­tion. The poll found deep fears among UNC sup­port­ers that Pan­day was like­ly to go down in de­feat, lead­ing to the dis­so­lu­tion of the UNC and the sub­se­quent ne­glect of its sup­port­ers.

The threat to Pan­day's lead­er­ship comes from the same el­e­ment of NAR sup­port­ers, now trans­mi­grat­ed in­to the COP, that ex­pelled Pan­day and his ULF base. The com­plaint among UNC sup­port­ers is that el­e­ments of the COP are seek­ing to set­tle po­lit­i­cal scores by oust­ing Pan­day as leader through a plot of reg­is­ter­ing their mem­bers in the UNC to vote against Bas. Par­ty loy­al­ists com­plained about a plot by UNC neme­ses to take over the par­ty's base and use it to cap­ture po­lit­i­cal pow­er from which UNC sup­port­ers are not like­ly to be ben­e­fi­cia­ries be­cause of the ex­pect­ed ab­sence of strong lead­ers to ad­vo­cate for their in­ter­ests. This has trig­gered UNC loy­al­ists to com­plain that while COP did not want to unite with the UNC to win the 2007 elec­tions, they now want to de­ter­mine the UNC's leader. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, COP's po­lit­i­cal leader Win­ston Dook­er­an re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue, while nei­ther Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Pan­day nor Ma­haraj could not be reached for com­ment.