Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly has made it clear that he has no in­ten­tion of mend­ing his re­la­tion­ship with UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as­sert­ing that he and four oth­er so-called dis­si­dents have been side­lined.

At the open­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court’s new term in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Ram­bal­ly told re­porters he is frus­trat­ed with the lack of struc­ture with­in the UNC. He re­it­er­at­ed his doubts about Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s abil­i­ty to win the next gen­er­al elec­tion and ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly rep­re­sent his con­stituents.

Dur­ing the first sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as Par­lia­ment re­con­vened for its fifth and fi­nal ses­sion of the 12th term last Fri­day, five UNC mem­bers, la­belled as dis­si­dents, were seat­ed at the far end of the cham­ber, away from the UNC leader. Ram­bal­ly de­scribed this arrange­ment as the lat­est slight against them.

“It is no se­cret that the five of us, we have been side­lined for a long time. And I have asked to de­bate. I have just not dealt with it pub­licly be­cause I don’t want to give any im­pres­sion or give the op­por­tu­ni­ty to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar of all peo­ple to make these ridicu­lous com­ments that we are vexed that we are not speak­ing in Par­lia­ment. That is not so. But we would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion.”

Ram­bal­ly added that Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray was ready to de­bate last week, and they have all made it clear to the chief whip that they are pre­pared to do so.

Among the oth­er dis­si­dents are Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles, Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr. Rai Rag­bir.

Ram­bal­ly em­pha­sised that he is not in­ter­est­ed in re­pair­ing his re­la­tion­ship with Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“Kiss­ing and mak­ing up? That is not in my DNA. I’m not in­ter­est­ed in that. I am in­ter­est­ed in that if we want to run this coun­try prop­er­ly, I think we need to pull back things. We need to start hav­ing struc­ture in the UNC which it does not have.”

Ram­bal­ly al­so said it was too ear­ly to de­cide whether he will sub­mit nom­i­na­tions when the par­ty screens can­di­dates for the gen­er­al elec­tions. He crit­i­cised the screen­ing process, ar­gu­ing that it is un­fair to ex­pect him to de­clare a clean le­gal record while oth­ers on the screen­ing com­mit­tee may have un­re­solved le­gal is­sues.

“You put out a form which every­body is ex­pect­ed to sign, those who have pend­ing pro­ceed­ings, those who have like­ly pro­ceed­ings, those who have crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and what­ev­er else. I need not say any­more. I can’t know that I have sub­mit­ted mine and I have a clean bill of health but you have per­sons who don’t have a clean bill of health seek­ing to screen me.”

At­tempts to reach Per­sad-Bisses­sar for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.