Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that she has fi­nal­ly purged the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is her de­c­la­ra­tion that the late Bas­deo Pan­day’s in­flu­ence in the par­ty is now over and there is al­so no way back for his daugh­ter in the par­ty. 

On Sat­ur­day evening, at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, the UNC and its Coali­tion of In­ter­ests un­veiled their 39 can­di­dates for the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I have purged the pol­i­tics of caste, class, nepo­tism, fam­i­ly con­nec­tions, seg­re­ga­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion and dy­nasty from the UNC.” 

In a veiled at­tack against her for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader and found­ing UNC mem­ber, she added, “It took me about 15 years to trans­form the UNC from a one-man show and hered­i­tary aris­toc­ra­cy in­to a mer­i­toc­ra­cy.” 

Com­ment­ing on her state­ments yes­ter­day, Ra­goonath said, “It was a one-man show pri­or to 2010, peo­ple saw that. And since 2015 she has been singing that song be­cause even in 2010 the can­di­dates who were se­lect­ed still were lin­ger­ing from the Pan­day days. Sub­has (Pan­day) was still there and so on. By 2015 and as we got in­to 2020 we heard her mak­ing ref­er­ence that the chil­dren of the or­di­nary peo­ple, like taxi dri­vers, were now cho­sen to take on MP po­si­tions in the par­ty where in the past they prob­a­bly would not have got­ten it un­der the one-man show.” 

Ra­goonath added, “The way Mick­ela (Pan­day) still po­si­tions her­self is that she is Bas­deo Pan­day rein­car­nate and that is an at­tempt to dis­pel any con­cern that Mick­ela has any fur­ther role to play in the UNC, and that she can stay with her Pa­tri­ot­ic Front. I don’t think she will get very far with that. 

Ra­goonath be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so an­nounc­ing that groups like the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha have no more in­flu­ence in the UNC. 

“The sug­ges­tion was made in the past that in 2020 when Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly was se­lect­ed by the UNC that was a Ma­ha Sab­ha plant. Of course, this time around I don’t think the Ma­ha Sab­ha has any foothold amongst the can­di­dates, the clos­est they would have come would have been a Kiel Tak­lals­ingh.” 

Ra­goonath said it was not the UNC lead­er­ship that helped purge the par­ty but the mem­bers as well. 

Mean­while po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments could be in­ter­pret­ed as a warn­ing that no­body is en­ti­tled to a po­si­tion in the UNC any­more. 

“There are those who chose to fight for space with­in the UNC be­liev­ing that they could sim­ply waltz in and get a space be­cause of who they are—I be­lieve they are in the mi­nor­i­ty. At the same time, how­ev­er, there are per­sons who be­came politi­cians be­cause of their loy­al­ty to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar who got it quite eas­i­ly not un­der­stand­ing how oth­ers have fought over years to be­long and to de­serv­ing­ly be giv­en space and be­cause of the priv­i­lege of the eas­i­ness of the re­ward have turned their backs.” 

With re­spect to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s bro­ken re­la­tion­ship with Mick­ela Pan­day, Mo­hammed said it is very com­plex and the nar­ra­tive that the UNC leader is the ag­gres­sor is not ac­cu­rate. He said Pan­day needs to shoul­der some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. 

Re­flect­ing on the UNC leader’s cur­rent slate, Mo­hammed be­lieves the coun­try is wit­ness­ing the evo­lu­tion of the par­ty and he firm­ly be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar has more sur­pris­es up her sleeve in the fu­ture.