Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day yes­ter­day "fired" UNC's new deputy leader Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit from her sen­a­to­r­i­al post and re­placed her in the Up­per House with Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Christo­pher Joe­field. Pan­day con­firmed the change yes­ter­day. Ou­dit–who be­came deputy leader on the slate of new UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar–has said that the dis­missal was not un­ex­pect­ed. "My pub­lic de­c­la­ra­tion of sup­port for Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar as po­lit­i­cal leader in the Jan­u­ary 24 UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion was done with the full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of pos­si­ble con­se­quences and I stood ful­ly pre­pared to ac­cept any ac­tion against me in this mat­ter," she said. Pan­day said he held dis­cus­sions with PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke on Mon­day at the Op­po­si­tion Leader's of­fice. Sub­se­quent­ly, Pan­day ap­point­ed Joe­field as a sen­a­tor on Duke's ad­vice, ef­fec­tive yes­ter­day. Pan­day said that in or­der to make room for Joe­field's ap­point­ment, he re­voked Ou­dit's ap­point­ment. He added: "It was al­ways my pol­i­cy and prac­tice to use my of­fice as Op­po­si­tion Leader to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic de­ci­sion process of the voice­less who are be­ing de­nied such op­por­tu­ni­ties by the Con­sti­tu­tion and the elec­toral process," he said.

Pan­day said Joe­field was be­ing ap­point­ed to al­low the PSA to air its views in the Sen­ate when de­bate on the pro­posed T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty be­gins. He said the leg­is­la­tion threat­ens the jobs of 2,000 pub­lic ser­vants. "There is no one more qual­i­fied to rep­re­sent their in­ter­ests than their union–the PSA, I ful­ly sup­port the work­ers and the PSA in this mat­ter," Pan­day said. Asked if Ou­dit's re­moval was per­ma­nent and whether Joe­field would con­tin­ue in the Sen­ate af­ter de­bate on the TTRA bill, Pan­day said: "Af­ter the bill has been de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate, I will dis­cuss the mat­ter with Mr Joe­field." Pan­day said he had called Ou­dit on the tele­phone to in­form her that her ap­point­ment was be­ing re­voked. Ou­dit, a sec­ondary school teacher, served in the Sen­ate for a year. She was ap­point­ed to the Sen­ate in Feb­ru­ary 2009, re­plac­ing Cindy Shar­ma, al­so a teacher. Shar­ma re­signed as a sen­a­tor last year, cit­ing heavy job re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Ou­dit was in­volved in a mi­nor con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing the UNC's elec­tions, since she ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed Pan­day then switched loy­al­ties to Per­sad- Bisses­sar.

She sub­se­quent­ly crit­i­cised ac­tions by Pan­day dur­ing the UNC's cam­paign. Yes­ter­day, Ou­dit said Pan­day gave her no ex­pla­na­tion for the re­vo­ca­tion. "And so far, I have no of­fi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port this ver­bal re­vo­ca­tion of my Sen­ate ap­point­ment," she said. "How­ev­er, I ac­cept his de­ci­sion. I have no choice but to abide by Mr Pan­day's de­ci­sion, based on his con­sti­tu­tion­al right as the cur­rent Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. "In his cur­rent ca­pac­i­ty as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, he had the au­thor­i­ty to ap­point and re­move ap­point­ments to the Sen­ate." Ou­dit said the UNC's elec­tion re­sults were "over­whelm­ing" in the sup­port for Per­sad- Bisses­sar. "Hav­ing been elect­ed deputy leader, I'm com­mit­ted to serv­ing the peo­ple of this par­ty, and by ex­ten­sion T&T, in what­ev­er ca­pac­i­ty need­ed," she said. "My work in­side the Par­lia­ment was on­ly a small part of my com­mit­ment to serv­ing T&T and that com­mit­ment con­tin­ues.

"This re­vo­ca­tion in no way re­duces my de­ter­mi­na­tion to work with the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive." Yes­ter­day, Pan­day was asked about the per­cep­tion that Ou­dit's re­moval might be re­lat­ed to the sim­mer­ing in­ter­nal is­sues be­tween him­self and Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her team. He replied: "I have no an­swer for that." Asked if there will be fur­ther changes among UNC's Sen­ate team, Pan­day said: "I'll mon­i­tor per­for­mances and if nec­es­sary take the nec­es­sary ac­tion. "Some­body has to be in charge," he said. "No­body seems to be in charge, so I have to in­di­cate who's in charge. The chief whip doesn't know his As from his Bs...they come to Par­lia­ment and make a mock­ery of the sys­tem and bring the UNC in­to ridicule and con­tempt." Pan­day who re­cent­ly fired Op­po­si­tion of­fice staff, said he has man­dat­ed ad­ver­tise­ments for the po­si­tions of chief com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer and at­tor­ney and re­search of­fi­cer.