KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate leader Wade Mark yes­ter­day de­clared that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress re­mains unit­ed and will ad­here to its con­sti­tu­tion.

“Elec­tions in the UNC will be held when they are due so don’t bul­ly the ex­ec­u­tive. Don’t bul­ly the par­ty. It is mis­chie­vous to at­tempt that,” he said at a me­dia con­fer­ence at UNC head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas.

Mark, who was re­spond­ing to a call by Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray for na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions to be held by June, added: “The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, its his­to­ry is rich with its com­mit­ment to not on­ly its con­sti­tu­tion but the very tenets of democ­ra­cy, the rule of law. That is where we are. That is where we have come from the ‘one man, one woman, one vote’. So, it is mis­guid­ed for any­one to give the im­pres­sion that our great and glo­ri­ous par­ty is veer­ing away from those rich tra­di­tions.”

When asked if there was any fear among mem­bers that Paray’s sup­port could grow and even­tu­al­ly over­throw Per­sad-Bisses­sar, an un­fazed Mark said he had seen many episodes un­fold through­out the par­ty’s ex­is­tence and the UNC has re­mained re­silient.

“We have a mem­ber­ship of over 100,000 peo­ple and ris­ing and those are the peo­ple who will de­cide who will emerge vic­to­ri­ous. On­ly the mem­bers will de­ter­mine the lead­ers, as they have done over the years,” he said.

“So, I have faith and I have con­fi­dence in the peo­ple, in the mass­es, in the mem­ber­ship of our par­ty to make de­ci­sions in the in­ter­est of their own wel­fare and well-be­ing. I can­not spec­u­late on the fu­ture. I can on­ly deal with the re­al­i­ty and the re­al­i­ty is that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is com­mit­ted to its de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples and val­ues and ad­heres to its con­sti­tu­tion and any­one who is sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise is mis­guid­ed.”

Mark en­cour­aged sup­port­ers and the coun­try at large to not be con­fused or dis­tract­ed by what was hap­pen­ing in the par­ty. He said the big­ger pic­ture is fo­cus­ing on win­ning the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

“You have to keep your eyes fo­cused on the big prize and what is the big prize? The big prize is that the peo­ple want to ex­hale. They want to ex­hale and they want gen­er­al elec­tions ... We are prepar­ing for gen­er­al elec­tions when­ev­er they are called so no­body will catch us in a sur­pris­ing mood,” he said.