JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

One po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst says pre­vi­ous sup­port of a PNM can­di­date is not an in­di­ca­tion that Pun­dit Satyanand Dube is a PNM op­er­a­tive as he is be­ing ac­cused of by the UNC's po­lit­i­cal leader.

So says Dr Shane Mo­hammed, who main­tains the pun­dit's show of sup­port to an op­pos­ing can­di­date is an in­di­ca­tor that Pun­dit Dube is will­ing to sup­port the can­di­date he be­lieves is best, as op­posed to blind par­ty loy­al­ty.

On Sun­day, Pun­dit Satyanand Dube of Char­lieville en­cour­aged his con­gre­ga­tion to sup­port Rush­ton Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate in the UNC’s up­com­ing ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions.  Pun­dit Dube al­so ac­cused the UNC leader of dis­lik­ing Hin­dus.

How­ev­er, Dr Mo­hammed says some mem­bers of the UNC maybe dis­con­tent­ed and are will­ing to put coun­try be­fore par­ty.

He says sup­port of a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date is not nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­port of that can­di­date’s par­ty.

“It’s quite easy for Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar and any­body in the Star Team to brand any­body a PNM op­er­a­tive,” Dr Mo­hammed ob­serves.

He notes that the par­ty’s lead­er­ship has not been very good at cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing a re­la­tion­ship with the mem­bers which al­lows those mem­bers to feel heard and seen, and their view­points on the par­ty’s di­rec­tion so­licit­ed and tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

“That would have led to peo­ple get­ting frus­trat­ed with with her and even the lead­er­ship of the UNC over­all and shift­ing their gears,” he said.

The po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst al­so is of the view that the Op­po­si­tion Leader's open sup­port of the Star Team is un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic.

“I think it is high­ly dis­taste­ful and un­eth­i­cal that Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar is on a Star Team plat­form sup­port­ing a team when she re­fused to put her­self up for re-elec­tion and to con­test the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the par­ty,” Dr Mo­hammed said.

“Yes, it is her pre­rog­a­tive," he con­cedes. "Nonethe­less, I be­lieve she owed it to both sides to stay out of the elec­tion cam­paign. Let the Star Team stand on their own mer­it against the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots.”

He ad­vised the lead­ers of both camps—the Star Team and the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots—to have a prop­er man­age­ment sys­tem in place for their mes­sag­ing dur­ing the cam­paign, to en­sure it does not de­gen­er­ate in­to ‘dirty pol­i­tick­ing’.

Dr Mo­hammed was a guest on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show.