Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

At­tor­ney Ricky Har­nanan has been man­dat­ed to pin­point the re­quire­ments that Bas­deo Pan­day would need to form an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty, and main­tain his po­si­tion as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to a well-placed in­for­mant.

"Ricky has been asked to pre­pare a con­sti­tu­tion (for Pan­day's pro­posed par­ty) for con­sid­er­a­tion, in con­sul­ta­tion with Ramesh Ma­haraj, and the dis­cus­sions with Ramesh have been spear­head­ed by Kelvin (Ram­nath)," said the in­for­mant, who was close to Pan­day. "It in­cludes?Ramesh be­ing made chief whip and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and po­lit­i­cal leader-in-wait­ing (of Pan­day's new par­ty)." The in­for­mant said that Pan­day was hold­ing on to his strength of Op­po­si­tion UNC Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs)–his daugh­ter Mikela, broth­er Sub­has, Kelvin Ram­nath, Ramesh Ma­haraj, Vas­ant Bharath, Dr Hamza Rafeeq and Dr Tim Gopeesingh–to pre­vent his ri­val, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, from re­mov­ing and re­plac­ing him as Op­po­si­tion Leader. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who de­feat­ed Pan­day to be­come po­lit­i­cal leader of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), in­di­cat­ed last week that she need­ed the writ­ten sup­port of one more Op­po­si­tion MP for Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to ap­point her to the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader.

The in­for­mant ex­plained that Pan­day and the MPs loy­al to him would in­di­cate to the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that their al­le­giance was changed from the UNC to their new pro­posed po­lit­i­cal par­ty and that their sup­port, which would be the ma­jor­i­ty of the Op­po­si­tion MPs, was for Pan­day to be Op­po­si­tion Leader. "Some­one, I am not sure whom, ac­tu­al­ly pre­pared a pros and cons doc­u­ment, which con­clud­ed that if Pan­day formed his own par­ty, he could be po­lit­i­cal leader and un­chal­lenged as Op­po­si­tion Leader," the in­for­mant said. "He would be able to ap­point sen­a­tors, but more im­por­tant­ly, he could field can­di­dates for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion and is like­ly to pull some sup­port from the UNC, which will ad­verse­ly af­fect the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can­di­dates in the lo­cal. "More than that, the fail­ure of Kam­la to emerge vic­to­ri­ous at any of these stages: Op­po­si­tion Leader, lo­cal gov­ern­ment, would im­pact on her mo­men­tum and Pan­day could then cite her fail­ure as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his ac­tions."

Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­mant, "the fly in the oint­ment was how Tim, Roodal and Hamza?would view this," since there was con­cern that Gopeesingh would switch sides and?join Mooni­lal, who was per­ceived to be a Kam­la sup­port­er. "Pan­day re­mains un­cer­tain as he does not be­lieve that enough ground­work has been?laid to es­tab­lish that the (UNC in­ter­nal) elec­tion was stolen, hence?Ramesh will up the pres­sure for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion," the in­for­mant said. "No fi­nal de­ci­sion has been tak­en, but there are el­e­ments, in­clud­ing Adesh Nanan,?who, sur­pris­ing­ly, wants it to hap­pen." In T&T, a lo­cal po­lit­i­cal par­ty re­quired the sup­port of sev­er­al peo­ple, in­clud­ing the ap­point­ment of a gen­er­al sec­re­tary and reg­is­tra­tion with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).