RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The UNC has lost its base and can nev­er get back in­to the gov­ern­ment un­der its cur­rent lead­er­ship, says the par­ty’s founder Bas­deo Pan­day.

He was speak­ing af­ter re­sults of the UNC’s in­ter­nal polls showed on­ly 17,066 peo­ple had turned up to vote, out of a pool of 115,000 fi­nan­cial mem­bers.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Pan­day said the po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had killed the par­ty which he formed in 1989 out of the uni­fi­ca­tion of op­po­si­tion forces

“The UNC is go­ing to die. It is al­ready dead for all in­tents and pur­pos­es,” Pan­day said. He added, “Any par­ty that can­not bring out its vot­ers in such a high paced cam­paign means the rank and file have lost in­ter­est in the par­ty.”

Asked what could be done to re­pair the par­ty and in­crease in­ter­est, Pan­day said the par­ty was “be­yond re­pair.”

How­ev­er, he said all was not lost.

“ It is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to get to­geth­er and form a unit­ed op­po­si­tion which ex­cludes the whole ques­tion of race, a par­ty that unites peo­ple in­stead rather than di­vid­ing as the PNM and Kam­la did,” he added.

Pan­day said if a new par­ty is formed, this could bring an end to trib­al pol­i­tics.

“It’s a slow change but any right-think­ing per­son will see what has hap­pened in this elec­tion and that is that the Op­po­si­tion could nev­er take the gov­ern­ment if they can’t get the peo­ple to come out and vote for them,” he said.

Pan­day fur­ther said that COVID-19 has lit­tle to do with the low vot­er turnout, not­ing that in the last in­ter­nal elec­tions, the sit­u­a­tion was the same.

Pan­day said those who went up against Per­sad-Bisses­sar had no po­lit­i­cal fu­ture even be­fore they con­test­ed.

He said that a new par­ty is the on­ly rem­e­dy to take the PNM out of of­fice, not­ing that the pop­u­la­tion was clam­our­ing for change.

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Maukesh Bas­deo did not share Pan­day’s view.

He said it was the pan­dem­ic and not vot­er dis­en­chant­ment which kept sup­port­ers away from the polls.

Re­spond­ing to the sta­tis­tics that Per­sad-Bisses­sar got 14,873 votes while Bharat got 2,193 votes, Bas­deo said, “ 14,000 votes is still a sig­nif­i­cant amount of votes, giv­en the COVID re­stric­tions. Had that elec­tion been held un­der oth­er con­di­tions, then it would have demon­strat­ed a de­cline in the in­ter­est of the par­ty but the pan­dem­ic would have de­terred peo­ple from com­ing out.”

He al­so said that there was enough time be­fore the next elec­tion for the par­ty to heal in­ter­nal­ly.

“The par­ty will face the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions be­fore a gen­er­al elec­tion in 2025. The best way to mea­sure the par­ty’s ef­fec­tive­ness is how it holds the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count, that means ex­ec­u­tive ac­count­abil­i­ty via the ma­chin­ery arm like the leg­is­la­ture. That will test the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the par­ty in the short term pe­ri­od,” Bas­deo said.

He not­ed that in the last gen­er­al elec­tions, it was clear that small­er par­ties were dec­i­mat­ed, not­ing that on­ly the UNC and the PNM were strong enough to at­tract a siz­able num­ber of vot­ers