Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Be­fore a full house at the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School, on Thurs­day evening, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pre­sent­ed the slate for her Star Team that will con­test the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ in­ter­nal elec­tions on June 26.

Led by the for­mer prime min­is­ter her­self, who is seek­ing her 12th suc­ces­sive year as par­ty leader, the team’s slate fea­tured three con­tenders for the po­si­tions of Deputy Lead­ers–Jear­lean John, David Lee and Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

In the re­main­ing po­si­tions, Dave Tan­coo will com­pete for the po­si­tion of chair­man, Khadi­jah Ameen for Vice Chair­man, Van­dana Mo­hit for Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer, Sad­dam Ho­sein for Re­search Of­fi­cer, Don Sylvester for Elec­tion Of­fi­cer, Neil Go­sine for Trea­sur­er, Wil­fred Mor­ris for In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer, Ravi Rati­ram for Par­ty Or­gan­is­er, Shan­ti Boodram for South Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor, Bar­ry Padarath for Cen­tral Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor, Eli Za­k­our for North West Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor, Anil Roberts for North East Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor, Tahar­qa Obi­ka for To­ba­go Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor and Sean Sobers round­ed up the team.

To the sound of tas­sa drums, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­fi­dence in her team.

She be­lieved it was com­prised of the right peo­ple to win the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions and then the Gen­er­al Elec­tion to come lat­er on.

“We have a fight­ing team. We have a dili­gent team. We have a com­mit­ted team that will help us move for­ward in gov­ern­ment,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said to ap­plause from the crowd.

“The PNM has de­stroyed the coun­try…They have no plan, no strat­e­gy…Every sin­gle in­sti­tu­tion has bro­ken down. Every­thing is bro­ken down,” she added.

The Op­po­si­tion leader made an ap­peal to all UNC sup­port­ers to band to­geth­er in or­der to de­feat the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

“Don’t let it hap­pen again, let us get com­mit­ted from now. Let us unite now. Too many are falling vic­tims to crime. Too many are falling vic­tims to hunger, hard­ship, help­less­ness and high cost of liv­ing, and every­where you turn it’s on­ly de­spair and job­less­ness,” she said.

In her 30-minute long speech, Per­sad-Bisses­sar once again ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of pro­tect­ing pae­dophiles.

She claimed that, ac­cord­ing to her in­for­ma­tion, the Po­lice Ser­vice is yet to act on the Ju­dith Jones Re­port in­to abuse at Chil­dren’s Homes.

“Go in­to those homes and re­move those mon­sters from those homes, and re­move the chil­dren from those homes,” she said.

The UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader in­cum­bent al­so re­peat­ed her call for the res­ig­na­tion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour.

Ar­mour was re­cent­ly dis­qual­i­fied by a Mi­a­mi judge from rep­re­sent­ing the State in its Pi­ar­co Air­port Cor­rup­tion case.

Last week­end, the judge dis­qual­i­fied both Ar­mour and the Se­qour Law Firm from rep­re­sent­ing the State in the mat­ter against T&T’s for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung.

The judge ruled that the at­tor­neys had to be dis­qual­i­fied be­cause they pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed the de­fen­dant in the Mag­is­trates’ Court for the same mat­ter in 2004.

Dur­ing his speech, Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein al­leged that the Se­quor Law Firm had been paid $13.58 mil­lion in le­gal fees so far.

UNC’s last in­ter­nal elec­tions took place in De­cem­ber 2020.

The UNC called its elec­tions ear­ly in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions due lat­er this year.

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