Dear Editor,

The Opposition Leader of T&T, Basdeo Panday, faces a tough challenge to his leadership of the UNC party he founded 20 years ago.  The party’s membership will choose a new leader on January 24.  Polls show challenger Kamla Persad Bissessar, a protégé and one of three deputy leaders of the party, as the heavy favourite to wrest the leadership from Panday. The other challenger is former deputy leader and one time successor, Ramesh Maharaj, the former Attorney General who was dismissed from Panday’s cabinet over his opposition to corruption.  Maharaj’s firing led to the collapse of the UNC government and new elections which Panday lost in December 2001.

Supporters of Bissessar say a poll they commissioned showed her with 73% support in mid-December and 94% at the end of December. A NACTA poll gave Bissessar 27% but the poll showed she has wide appeal among voters in Trinidad, although she trails Panday within the UNC membership with Maharaj a close third.  A quarter of the voters were still undecided at the end of December.

The NACTA poll found that members of another party, COP, have infiltrated the UNC, obtaining membership with the goal of replacing Panday with Bissessar as leader. There were also complaints of a plot to dissolve the UNC and/or merge it with COP without Panday and Maharaj, two of the strongest leaders in the opposition. This has been dominating the news over the last week with COP leader, Winston Dookeran, a former leader of the UNC, admitting that many COP members are also UNC members.  He said it was up to the UNC if they wanted COP members to vote in their elections.

The UNC members are now up in arms over the COP infiltration, causing the UNC Elections Commission to consider carrying out an exercise to purge the voters’ list of COP members. The UNC Elections Commission will decide this week what to do about COP members who are on the UNC voters’ list.

Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram