For­mer Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture as well as Trade and In­dus­try un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Vas­ant Bharath, has slammed Op­po­si­tion Leader and UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, over her com­ments on par­ty ac­tivists de­mand­ing ac­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy from the Op­po­si­tion on Ca­roni lands for for­mer work­ers of Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed, call­ing her "clear­ly un­sta­ble and pos­si­bly bipo­lar".

The group, which in­clud­ed for­mer Ca­roni work­ers, had clashed with ac­tivists from the UNC Women’s Arm on Sun­day March 20th.

Mr Bharath has stat­ed that he had noth­ing to do with Sun­day’s events. 

Dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed as “de­spi­ca­ble and dis­turb­ing” what she said was the Women’s Arm be­ing “stalked” and at­tacked by “hideous and abu­sive” men.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment is­sued to­day, Vas­ant Bharath de­scribed the UNC leader as “des­per­ate” and rub­bished her al­le­ga­tions against him.

“In her des­per­a­tion, she has 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,” he said in the state­ment.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by Mr Bharath…

"I note the com­ments at­trib­uted to the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, in the Trinidad Guardian of to­day’s date, made in last night’s MNF in which I was ac­cused, by rea­son­able in­fer­ence, of “send­ing those de­spi­ca­ble low life, lo­chos to beat and abuse UNC women”.

This la­dy is clear­ly un­sta­ble and pos­si­bly bipo­lar, hav­ing called for UNI­TY on­ly last week she is 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 that they are un­e­d­u­cat­ed and naive enough to ac­cept her bla­tant lies and fab­ri­ca­tions, tak­ing them for grant­ed by play­ing 1960’s 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.

In her des­per­a­tion, she has 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.

Rest as­sured that I in­tend to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to pre­vent the con­tin­ued slur­ring of my name and cor­rect the pub­lic record."