The Bet­ter Unit­ed group of par­ties has turned down an ap­proach from New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV) leader Fuad Abu Bakr to re­turn to the group af­ter he struck out in get­ting a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment elec­tion can­di­da­cy last week.

Bet­ter Unit­ed’s Louis Lee Sing (Port-of-Spain Peo­ple’s Move­ment leader) con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day af­ter the group dis­cussed the ap­proach at their week­ly Wednes­day meet­ing.

Bet­ter Unit­ed in­cludes the PPM, Con­gress of the Peo­ple and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of T&T. The group formed af­ter a meet­ing which for­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day had ear­li­er this year seek­ing a unit­ed op­po­si­tion force un­der one um­brel­la to con­test elec­tions. Pan­day and some oth­ers who at­tend­ed his meet­ing agreed to go that route but the COP, PPM and oth­ers didn’t and formed Bet­ter Unit­ed.

Lee Sing said Bakr was at Pan­day’s meet­ing and af­ter had at­tend­ed BU’s meet­ings con­sis­tent­ly. He said at the end of last week’s meet­ing, Bakr told the group he was no longer avail­able since he was be­ing screened by the PNM the fol­low­ing day for the Port-of-Spain South con­stituen­cy.

“We were all sur­prised,” Lee Sing said.

“I was tak­en aback. I re­al­ly be­lieved Fuad had po­ten­tial to be a strong con­trib­u­tor to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. One group mem­ber said (PNM) wasn’t what he want­ed for Mr Bakr, but he wished him well. I cau­tioned him ‘how you make your bed, you lie on it.’’’

Lee Sing said he’d asked Bakr whom he’d spo­ken to in PNM’s lead­er­ship and was told the leader. He said he al­so asked if Bakr was promised a seat and he said ‘yes.’

The PNM’s de­nied of­fer­ing or plan­ning to screen Bakr for a seat. PNM leader and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so said he couldn’t re­mem­ber the last time he spoke to the NNV leader and nev­er in­vit­ed him in­to the PNM.

Lee Sing said ear­li­er this week Bakr ap­proached a BU mem­ber to re­turn and asked if it would be con­ve­nient to work with the group.

“We agreed to dis­cuss it at our week­ly meet­ing. We did so and ar­rived at con­sen­sus. We not­ed he’d cho­sen to go to PNM. But the gen­e­sis of Bet­ter Unit­ed was to bring good gov­er­nance to T&T, which wouldn’t have been nec­es­sary if the PNM was do­ing that,” he said.

“So while we wish Mr Bakr well on his jour­ney, we don’t feel our ship can sail in the same di­rec­tion as his. We’re now con­vinced his agen­da isn’t in sync with ours.’’

The de­ci­sion was be­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Bakr by the BU mem­ber he ap­proached, Lee Sing said.

COP leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan agreed how Bakr made his bed, he’d now have to lie on it.

“It’s whether he sub­scribed to BU’s philoso­phies. If he did, he wouldn’t have gone to PNM,” she said. —Gail Alexan­der