KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ues to draw fire from her own mem­bers.

Twen­ty-four hours af­ter fil­ing his gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­na­tion pa­pers on Thurs­day, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly yes­ter­day held noth­ing back as he pub­licly called for the res­ig­na­tion of Per­sad-Bisses­sar as par­ty leader and a re­struc­tur­ing of the UNC, rais­ing sev­er­al con­cerns about how de­ci­sions are made in the par­ty and the lack of trans­paren­cy with the par­ty’s funds.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas, Ram­bal­ly slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for turn­ing the UNC in­to a par­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with “cur­ry duck, rum and roti”, con­demned its cult-like cul­ture and said the par­ty will not win the next gen­er­al elec­tion un­der Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship.

Ram­bal­ly said, “The UNC’s in­abil­i­ty to win the next elec­tions or any elec­tions stems from the con­tin­ued fail­ure of the lead­er­ship of Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar… Cur­ry duck, rum and roti are no longer the main fare at fam­i­ly events on­ly... These fan­fare events have made their way in­to the par­ty’s modus operan­di.

“We must not for one mo­ment un­der­es­ti­mate our present lead­er­ship, which col­lec­tive­ly has years of ex­pe­ri­ence un­der their belt but which seems bent on per­pet­u­at­ing their own cult, seem­ing­ly un­der van­i­ty, in this process they are wreak­ing hav­oc amongst the trust­ing UNC par­ty sup­port­ers. I, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, will not stand for that.”

Join­ing Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray in de­mand­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions be called when due, as he said the par­ty des­per­ate­ly needs re­struc­tur­ing, he said, “UNC in its present form can­not win any elec­tion and cer­tain­ly not the next gen­er­al elec­tion. The par­ty has to be re­vamped, re­or­gan­ised and re­vi­talised.

“If the UNC is al­lowed to be de­stroyed by lead­er­ship which is on­ly con­cerned about prop­a­gat­ing its own cult of per­son­al­i­ty and in re­main­ing in its po­si­tion to en­joy its trap­pings, then the fu­ture of the UNC and our na­tion is in grave dan­ger.”

Ram­bal­ly al­so list­ed sev­er­al in­ter­nal is­sues he said Per­sad-Bisses­sar failed to ad­dress. This in­cludes how the par­ty’s funds are spent, lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­fore de­bates and her tar­di­ness.

“Do you know MPs do­nate part of their salary, month­ly salaries, to the par­ty with no ac­count­abil­i­ty what­so­ev­er to how these monies are be­ing spent... We are un­aware whether the par­ty is in debt,” he said.

“One nev­er knows what is the pro­posed agen­da of any pro­posed meet­ing. Noth­ing starts on time or runs on time and you all know every­thing is noc­tur­nal. There are post fac­to de­bates of bills in the par­lia­ment cau­cus. As a mat­ter of fact, very rarely do we meet be­fore de­bat­ing bills or mat­ters af­fect­ing the par­ty as a whole, so we are un­able to prop­er­ly cau­cus po­si­tions which we are re­quired to do.”

He added, “Par­lia­men­tary de­bates on gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy that re­quire in-depth analy­sis are of­ten ne­glect­ed, with lit­tle or no co­or­di­na­tion be­fore de­bates on key bills. In more than one in­stance, my col­leagues and I have de­bat­ed bills, in­clud­ing the an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion, with­out know­ing how the par­ty in­tend­ed to vote un­til the time to vote. This is sim­ply not how a par­ty se­ri­ous about win­ning gov­ern­ment con­ducts its af­fairs.”

He al­so said par­ty loy­al­ists have been tak­en ad­van­tage of and many of them have com­plained that they do not know what’s go­ing on but are forced to blind­ly fol­low Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ram­bal­ly ad­mit­ted that speak­ing out would cause him to have a big­ger tar­get on his back, but said he on­ly wants what’s best for the par­ty.

Asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing re­s­e­lect­ed as the UNC Ch­agua­nas West can­di­date, Ram­bal­ly said he had no con­fi­dence in the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee or Per­sad-Bisses­sar. How­ev­er, he said whether or not he was se­lect­ed, he would con­tin­ue to stand up for what is right and he al­ways be a UNC mem­ber.

Ram­bal­ly had a few dozen sup­port­ers on hand yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing MP Na­pari­ma Rod­ney Charles, Dhar­ma­charya of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) and UNC found­ing chair­man Pun­dit Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram, Imam Rasheed Karim, and SDMS pres­i­dent gen­er­al Kr­ish­na Ram­bal­ly.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar hit back yes­ter­day, as she said she’s the one who has been un­able to trust some with­in the par­ty.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia hours af­ter Ram­bal­ly’s state­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said his rants in the pub­lic do­main will on­ly help the Gov­ern­ment and steps had been tak­en to en­sure some MPs did not know what was hap­pen­ing with­in the par­ty for a while now.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “These pub­lic rants by a few on­ly help this op­pres­sive Gov­ern­ment … Pre­cau­tions were tak­en with the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion in­ter­nal­ly af­ter three UNC MPs vot­ed against the UNC nom­i­nee, Is­rael Khan, in the vote for the elec­tion of the pres­i­dent. Those pre­cau­tions were made to pro­tect the par­ty so some mem­bers and MPs will not be aware of all the ac­tiv­i­ties oc­cur­ring with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”