Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has called on the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour not to make any ref­er­ence to the par­ty in its mon­i­tor­ing of the op­er­a­tions of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, not­ing that the UNC with­drew from the coun­cil this year.

“The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress con­tin­ues to abide by the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act, and all oth­er laws, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­lat­ed to elec­toral con­duct,” UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo said in a let­ter to coun­cil chair­man Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath yes­ter­day.

“Should any state­ments be is­sued by your coun­cil con­trary to our re­quest, we shall take the nec­es­sary ac­tion.”

Tan­coo sent the let­ter yes­ter­day to Ra­goonath, af­ter the coun­cil on Wednes­day stat­ed that it had start­ed mon­i­tor­ing all par­ties and can­di­dates for ad­her­ence to the coun­cil’s code of eth­i­cal po­lit­i­cal con­duct. This was af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion date of April 28 was an­nounced.

Tan­coo said, “As a par­ty which has with­drawn from the coun­cil since 30 Jan­u­ary, we ad­vise the coun­cil not to make ref­er­ence to the UNC in any way, shape or form, as this would amount to elec­tion in­ter­fer­ence.

“Your coun­cil is not a statu­to­ry or of­fi­cial body and, ac­cord­ing­ly, has no le­gal au­thor­i­ty over our par­ty. Yours is a self-ap­point­ed body whose name may false­ly give the pub­lic the im­pres­sion that it has some mea­sure of le­gal stand­ing, which it does not.”

Tan­coo added, “Any state­ments from your coun­cil re­fer­ring to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, there­fore, may be in­ter­pret­ed by the pub­lic as an of­fi­cial or qua­si-of­fi­cial state­ment on the UNC’s elec­toral con­duct, and may in­flu­ence vot­er be­hav­iour ac­cord­ing­ly.

“This would be mis­lead­ing and would amount to elec­tion in­ter­fer­ence. In­deed, crit­i­cisms may be made by par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­u­als on the coun­cil who have open­ly ex­pressed par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal agen­das else­where, and the source of these crit­i­cisms may be dis­guised if is­sued by your self-ap­point­ed coun­cil.”

Tan­coo added that the coun­cil would be be­hav­ing ir­re­spon­si­bly if it con­tin­ued to as­sess the UNC’s ac­tiv­i­ties.

“While pur­port­ing to be en­forc­ing a ‘Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct’, the coun­cil would in fact be be­hav­ing un­eth­i­cal­ly,” Tan­coo said.

Ra­goonath didn’t re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s queries yes­ter­day on the coun­cil’s view of the UNC’s po­si­tion.