Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) leader Mick­ela Pan­day says she ex­haust­ed all at­tempts for an au­di­ence with Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, short of sneak­ing in­to her bed­room.

Pan­day made the com­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to sug­ges­tions by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts and the pub­lic that she should have joined forces with the UNC, as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty that she could al­so form an al­liance with UNC dis­si­dent Rush­ton Paray if he is un­suc­cess­ful in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Free­dom 106.5FM yes­ter­day, a caller told Pan­day the prop­er po­lit­i­cal move would have been for her to join forces with the UNC.

“Mick­ela should know that go­ing her sep­a­rate way would on­ly take votes away from the UNC. Out of her good­ness, why can’t she try to make a deal with Kam­la? Mick­ela has to be part of the UNC,” the caller said.

In re­sponse, Pan­day told the caller she had spo­ken many times on this is­sue. She said from as far back as 2018, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had de­clined to meet with her for “uni­ty talks”.

“The on­ly thing I can do is sneak in­to her (Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s) house, and climb through her win­dow and when she’s sleep­ing, wake her up and say ‘Kam­la! Kam­la! Kam­la! Lis­ten, this is what we want to do’,” Pan­day ex­plained.

In­stead, Pan­day asked UNC sup­port­ers why they are un­able to take that same ques­tion to their leader.

“Why are her sup­port­ers not speak­ing to her? If this gen­tle­man (caller) be­lieves that I’m smart and this and that, tell me, why not speak to the leader of the par­ty? Or is it that sup­port­ers aren’t able to do so? To the leader, where is the democ­ra­cy?” Pan­day said.

Pan­day al­so sought to dis­miss al­le­ga­tions that the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front would on­ly rob the UNC of votes.

“What our dear caller means is the UNC can­not take away core PNM vot­ers, but the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front can. There is no seat in Trinidad and To­ba­go that is safe from us,” she sug­gest­ed.

Pan­day said the PF is open to lis­ten­ing to oth­er par­ties but if there is to be any thought of a coali­tion, the pur­pose can­not sole­ly be to beat the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment but on the foun­da­tion of want­i­ng to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for the pop­u­la­tion.

Con­tact­ed last evening on whether there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an al­liance be­tween her par­ty and mem­bers of Paray’s slate, Pan­day re­spond­ed via text mes­sage, “Mr Paray is not a mem­ber of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, but every­body is free to join.”

Asked if she and Paray had been in any dis­cus­sions since the PF launched over the week­end, Pan­day said, “I had a missed call af­ter my launch but we have not spo­ken.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an al­liance with Pan­day if his slate’s run in the UNC in­ter­nal is un­suc­cess­ful, Paray said, “My per­son­al view is that any per­son or or­gan­i­sa­tion that is will­ing to work hard to­ward na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment will be wel­comed in­to a re­la­tion­ship. We will work the re­la­tion­ship un­til it be­comes un­work­able. And at that time, we will try again.

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves the PF is al­ready wor­ry­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Dr Ra­goonath said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s scathing let­ter to Paray on Sat­ur­day is ev­i­dence of that.

In her re­sponse to Paray’s in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the launch of his in­ter­nal slate on Sat­ur­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I find it pass­ing strange that you have opt­ed to call your team ‘Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots’, giv­en that there is an­oth­er fledg­ling po­lit­i­cal par­ty named ‘Pa­tri­ot­ic Front’.”

Mak­ing a link be­tween the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions and the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front’s fu­ture, Ra­goonath said, “In that con­text, clear­ly Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and they are prob­a­bly think­ing that there may be some shar­ing of the UNC sup­port­ers if, for in­stance, Paray’s slate de­cides to ab­di­cate and join with the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front. That is al­ways a pos­si­bil­i­ty. And if it so hap­pens then the UNC may have some­thing to be con­cerned about.”

Ra­goonath be­lieves this can have a knock-on ef­fect in the next gen­er­al elec­tions.

“If, for in­stance, Paray is able to pull a thou­sand UNC sup­port­ers to vote for his slate from Ma­yaro, if a thou­sand peo­ple from Ma­yaro should leave the UNC and join an­oth­er par­ty, that will cre­ate a crit­i­cal mar­gin for the PNM to come back and take the Ma­yaro seat. So that is where the UNC will have to be con­cerned,” he sug­gest­ed.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he be­lieved Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be privy to in­for­ma­tion that is not yet pub­lic.

“With re­gard to the ref­er­ence of the Paray slate to the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar does not al­lude to some­thing with­out knowl­edge, and she may very well be in­di­rect­ly in­di­cat­ing that she is aware of such al­liances as con­tin­gency plans,” he said.

With re­spect to a pos­si­ble al­liance be­tween Pan­day and Paray, Mo­hammed said it may be pru­dent to wait on the out­come of the June 15 UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed be­lieves Pan­day needs to chart her own iden­ti­ty.

“The PF is now about to launch as an al­ter­na­tive. There are many fac­tors to con­sid­er which go be­yond the lega­cy of Bas­deo Pan­day. Miss Pan­day needs to chart an iden­ti­ty out­side of the shad­ows of her fa­ther and come in­to her own per­son. Very much in the same way Bri­an Man­ning does not hinge his po­lit­i­cal iden­ti­ty on the coat­tails of Mr Man­ning,” he said.

‘Pa­tri­ot­ic Front launch

cu­ri­ous at this time’

For­mer UNC mem­ber and at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Garvin Nicholas said it is quite pos­si­ble an al­liance be­tween Paray and Pan­day is brew­ing.

The Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND) po­lit­i­cal leader told Guardian Me­dia, “I see that as a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. I lis­tened to Ani­ta Haynes on the ra­dio this morn­ing and she spoke about re-en­gi­neer­ing her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, should she be un­suc­cess­ful in this (in­ter­nal) bid. And I thought the tim­ing of Mick­ela’s re­launch a bit cu­ri­ous, es­pe­cial­ly her call­ing for 41 can­di­dates when the par­ty that she has does not have any struc­ture as far as I am aware.”

Nicholas, who said there’s been no con­sid­er­a­tion at this time for the MND to join with the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, added, “I can cer­tain­ly see that if Paray and his team joins with Mick­ela. There is a chance of it be­ing quite at­trac­tive to a pop­u­la­tion that is seek­ing for a new dy­nam­ic in the pol­i­tics be­cause peo­ple are re­al­ly frus­trat­ed.”

Nicholas said he was dis­ap­point­ed with what he called “Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s” slate for the in­ter­nal elec­tions. He said the UNC leader missed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to present can­di­dates who would have had the pop­u­la­tion sali­vat­ing and al­low her to con­sol­i­date pow­er in the par­ty.

How­ev­er, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith be­lieves the word “Pa­tri­ots” is a com­mon name for po­lit­i­cal par­ties and slates and it may be a stretch to make a link be­tween Paray and Pan­day.

But he said his­to­ry has shown there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Paray’s slate and its sup­port­ers mov­ing away from the UNC if un­suc­cess­ful at the June 15 polls.

“We can go back to 2000, where what the an­a­lysts are speak­ing about did take place. Where Bas­deo Pan­day open­ly sup­port­ed a slate by Car­los John, it caused a lot of dis­en­chant­ment with the slate led by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj. Ma­haraj left, he took his mar­bles and formed his own par­ty, and the domi­no ef­fect is he just got a cou­ple hun­dred votes in Tu­na­puna and that cost the UNC that seat and it turned from 19-17 to 18-18,” Grif­fith ex­plained.

The NTA leader said in 2006, the fall­out be­tween Win­ston Dook­er­an’s slate and Bas­deo Pan­day’s slate in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions led to the for­ma­tion of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).

“It hap­pened twice be­fore, if it hap­pens again well that’s three strikes and we’re out,” Grif­fith said, adding he hopes there isn’t a civ­il war.

Grif­fith pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised the UNC slates to con­duct their in­ter­nal cam­paign­ing in a civilised and re­spect­ful man­ner.