Gail Alexan­der

Sev­er­al front­line UNC MPs — in­clud­ing MP Fuad Khan— have said peo­ple are swing­ing back to UNC and they've knocked for­mer par­ty leader Bas­deo Pan­day's bid to uni­fy small par­ties in­to a po­lit­i­cal third force.

MPs Khan, Su­ruj Ram­bachan, Roodal Mooni­lal and Rudy In­dars­ingh, who have all worked with Pan­day be­fore, ex­pressed the views af­ter Pan­day con­firmed last week he'd been speak­ing with small­er par­ties about pre­sent­ing a unit­ed po­lit­i­cal force as an al­ter­na­tive for vot­ers dis­en­chant­ed with the PNM and UNC.

Pan­day's pro­posed small par­ties should con­test elec­tions un­der a sin­gle ban­ner so they can change the Con­sti­tu­tion to al­low prop­er par­tic­i­pa­tion. Rep­re­sen­tatievs from the COP, MSJ, Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, New Na­tion­al Vi­sion, DPTT and oth­ers said they'd spo­ken with Pan­day. Some are at­tend­ing a meet­ing with him on Wednes­day in Ch­agua­nas.

But some for­mer UNC col­leagues aren't con­vinced.

Khan at­tend­ed a 2018 func­tion held by UNC's Gan­ga Singh where those present in­clud­ing Pan­day and Khan sup­port­ed uni­ty calls.

But Khan said yes­ter­day, " Noth­ing hap­pened on uni­ty since then. I at­tend­ed Fa­ti­ma's fete last Sat­ur­day and many peo­ple told me they're com­plete­ly dis­en­chant­ed with the PNM and are sup­port­ive of UNC. So I think Mr Pan­day should find a way to bro­ker arrange­ments with UNC's leader and mend the past for his daugh­ter Mikela's sake to be able to re­turn to the UNC which he built,"

"As a good fa­ther, his cur­rent ef­fort may be to cre­ate a space for Mikela as he re­alis­es she hasn't cre­at­ed one for her­self with her own par­ty. But she needs to re­turn to UNC, work and take her time to reach the top."

Ram­bachan added, "Mr Pan­day may be think­ing of Malaysian leader Ma­hathir (bin Mo­hamed) who made a come­back in his 90s. But Mr Pan­day, a bright man, needs to move with the times. One must recog­nise the dif­fer­ent roles one can play — he can be a very good men­tor at this time and help UNC ush­er in a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers. TT will be bet­ter served if he does this."

"His choice of where he goes is his, but UNC con­tin­ues speak­ing of him with high es­teem and re­spect. There's a think­ing in the East-West cor­ri­dor and mar­gin­al seats about UNC's role be­tween 2010-15 in keep­ing the econ­o­my go­ing. I be­lieve peo­ple are be­gin­ning to swing back to UNC and are will­ing to al­low an­oth­er chance in of­fice,"

Mooni­lal said, "Mr Pan­day's in­vi­ta­tion won't be to peo­ple like me who are com­fort­able, proud UNC mem­bers. But I don't feel any dis­en­chant­ment with UNC when I walk the malls, mar­ket and else­where. I was at Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta last Sat­ur­day— a fo­rum per­ceived to be tra­di­tion­al­ly at­tend­ed by PN­Mites— but the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple speak­ing to me were very sup­port­ive of UNC and UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar."

"How­ev­er it's an elec­tion year and pow­er is up for grabs - it's not un­usu­al for peo­ple to emerge'. But most peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in pow­er, not strug­gle . For al­most five years we in UNC were on the front­lines fight­ing- at times alone- tak­ing PNM's in­sults, jeers and threats and nev­er heard from any­one. Giv­en this 'dis­en­chant­ment' they speak of, why didn't they all present Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion can­di­dates?"

In­dars­ingh added: "The UNC got a lift in LG elec­tions which en­cour­aged us and we must con­tin­ue to work. Wher­ev­er I go in St Au­gus­tine, Tu­na­puna, Barataria, peo­ple are say­ing they need to 'vote out PNM' , send­ing a sig­nal they want UNC. I don't know if Mr Pan­day's ac­tion is meant to build mo­men­tum for his daugh­ter's par­ty which didn't get off the ground. But UNC's do­ing its work and peo­ple are ac­cept­ing our ini­tia­tives,"

UNC's Tim Gopeesingh, de­clin­ing com­ment, said he had to read Pan­day's state­ments. Singh, who'd host­ed the 2018 "uni­ty" func­tion didn't an­swer calls. PNM of­fi­cials said, "Mr Pan­day's free to do what he wants."