Gail Alexan­der

“Height­ened des­per­a­tion.”

That’s how for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has de­scribed par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­tack on him at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called out Bharath while de­fend­ing the UNC Women’s Arm in the clash that oc­curred with a group rep­re­sent­ing for­mer Ca­roni work­ers last Sun­day at Di­vali Na­gar.

The UNC’s David Lee had ques­tioned if Bharath was “be­hind this thing” but Bharath had de­nied any con­nec­tion with the ac­tiv­i­ty.

How­ev­er, on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred to peo­ple who’d “sent” the Ca­roni work­ers. She said she’d purged the UNC of peo­ple who be­lieve in caste and class, who be­lieve “be­cause of your fam­i­ly con­nec­tions, you should be there” and purged the par­ty from is­sues of dy­nasty pol­i­tics, dis­crim­i­na­tion and seg­re­ga­tion. She told Bharath to stop “wash­ing his mouth on UNC rank and file mem­ber­ship.” (See page 17)

Yes­ter­day, Bharath re­spond­ed to her at­tack.

He said he’d not­ed her com­ments “in which I was ac­cused, by rea­son­able in­fer­ence, of ‘send­ing those de­spi­ca­ble low life, lo­chos to beat and abuse UNC women.’”

Bharath al­leged, “This la­dy is clear­ly un­sta­ble ... Hav­ing called for uni­ty on­ly last week, she’s now boast­ing of hav­ing cleansed the par­ty of caste and class. These con­tin­ued un­war­rant­ed, ob­ses­sive and base­less at­tacks on me shows a height­ened lev­el of des­per­a­tion that she has lost her grip on the par­ty and on re­al­i­ty.

“She con­tin­ues to dis­re­spect the base of the par­ty by be­liev­ing they’re un­e­d­u­cat­ed and naive enough to ac­cept her bla­tant lies and fab­ri­ca­tions, tak­ing them for grant­ed by play­ing 1960’ pol­i­tics with their chil­dren’s lives when these cri­sis times call for a lev­el, sober head, pro­vid­ing hope, com­fort and as­sur­ance to a se­ri­ous­ly bur­dened peo­ple.”

Bharath added, “In her des­per­a­tion, she’d now re­sort­ed to abus­ing fel­low UNC ac­tivists by call­ing them ‘hooli­gans, stalk­ers, lo­chos and lowlifes’… sim­ply be­cause they were en­gaged in peace­ful protest for their Ca­roni lands.

“I de­nounce and re­ject this kind of gut­ter be­hav­iour from the leader of the Op­po­si­tion and stren­u­ous­ly de­ny these false and base­less al­le­ga­tions.”

He added, “Rest as­sured I in­tend to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to pre­vent the con­tin­ued slur­ring of my name and cor­rect the pub­lic record.”

Mean­while, ex-UNC min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, who’d sup­port­ed Bharath’s 2020 bid, al­so slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments. Now liv­ing in Cana­da, Ma­haraj said, “While T&T faces a for­eign ex­change cri­sis, mass un­em­ploy­ment, in­creas­ing food in­fla­tion, in­creas­ing crime, de­clin­ing health­care, con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19, glob­al sup­ply chal­lenges on the econ­o­my, a de­clin­ing en­er­gy sec­tor and oth­er na­tion­al is­sues, the Op­po­si­tion Leader chose in­stead to at­tack Bharath.

“I re­ceived a flur­ry of voice notes and mes­sages con­cern­ing the un­war­rant­ed, un­pro­voked at­tack. Un­able and in­ca­pable of deal­ing with the rul­ing PNM gov­ern­ment in a sober, ed­u­cat­ed man­ner, Kam­la pre­ferred to turn in­ward to find an un­sus­pect­ing vil­lain in Bharath to at­tack.

“On read­ing me­dia re­ports, the Op­po­si­tion Leader boast­ed of purg­ing the par­ty of who sup­port­ed nepo­tism, caste, class, fam­i­ly con­nec­tions and dy­nas­tic pol­i­tics im­ply­ing, of course, Bharath was guilty of us­ing one of these- pil­lo­ried mi­nus a shred of ev­i­dence.

“Vas­ant is re­mem­bered as one of the most ef­fec­tive ef­fi­cient UNC min­is­ters. But com­pe­ten­cy and in­tel­li­gence in the UNC is much like COVID19—to be quar­an­tined and elim­i­nat­ed.”

He ques­tioned if the UNC’s ad­vi­sors “ap­pear to be Jack Daniels, Jose Cuer­vo and John­ny Walk­er.”

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