Gail Alexan­der

There is now a "Bud­get de­bate" bill­board against Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Yet an­oth­er bill­board call­ing for the Op­po­si­tion leader to step down has popped up – this time on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain

It's the fifth bill­board put up by Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­trac­tors and was re­vealed yes­ter­day ahead of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­dress at Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' vir­tu­al meet­ing on Mon­day night.

The lat­est is an elec­tron­ic bill­board sim­i­lar to the first one set up in Aranguez, San Juan, ear­li­er this month. Three oth­ers were al­so put up in Clax­ton Bay, La Ro­maine and Ma­coya.

On Mon­day, ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj, who is be­hind the cam­paign for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to step down fol­low­ing her lat­est elec­tion de­feat, said more bill­boards will be go­ing up.

“The bill­board on In­de­pen­dence Square was de­lib­er­ate­ly cho­sen, as it was meant to send a mes­sage in the cap­i­tal city in the month of the 2021 Bud­get de­bate that there are sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ments with­in the UNC that are un­com­fort­able with the Kam­la-led UNC. Many an­tic­i­pate UNC MPs will be over­shad­owed by the PNM in de­bate," Ma­haraj said.

"The de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue with a pub­lic cam­paign call­ing on the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to step down fol­low­ing 11 suc­ces­sive elec­toral de­feats, in­clud­ing two gen­er­al elec­tions, comes from the tremen­dous feed­back I'm get­ting from the UNC mem­ber­ship, who are just sim­ply fed up of los­ing.

"On­ly yes­ter­day I re­ceived a call from a mem­ber from Bar­rack­pore ask­ing that I set up a bill­board on his prop­er­ty. I re­ceived a sim­i­lar call from an­oth­er mem­ber with land off the high­way in San Juan to do the same.

"The bill­boards have stim­u­lat­ed in­tense dis­cus­sions with­in the UNC mem­ber­ship. There are those die-hards who want Kam­la as leader no mat­ter if she con­tin­ues to lose elec­tion af­ter elec­tion. There's grow­ing seg­ments of UNC mem­bers that are in­tol­er­ant with the loss­es and right­ly blame the lead­er­ship."

Ma­haraj said the UNC lead­er­ship had re­spond­ed to the bill­boards by name-call­ing.

"She re­ferred to 'ants' no doubt a play on 'Dev Ant'. But there's no ad­dress­ing of the sub­stan­tial is­sue of the vi­o­la­tions of the UNC con­sti­tu­tion and los­ing elec­tion af­ter elec­tion," he said.

"MPs past and present are be­ing trot­ted out at UNC Mon­day meet­ings to en­dorse the leader, abus­ing the par­ty process for a lead­er­ship race in­ter­nal­ly. Re­cent­ly, Tim Gopeesingh, who didn't fea­ture in the elec­tion, found him­self on a Mon­day fo­rum to en­dorse the leader. This is all a re­ac­tion to the grow­ing mem­ber­ship dis­qui­et on the lead­er­ship is­sue,"

He not­ed the res­ig­na­tion of a UNC San Juan ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber yes­ter­day and so­cial me­dia posts call­ing for the bill­boards.