Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, one unit in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, is in­vin­ci­ble. Per­sad-Bisses­sar told hun­dreds of sup­port­ers at Tues­day night's cel­e­bra­tions to mark her sec­ond an­niver­sary as po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, that the par­ty be­longed to them and not any one in­di­vid­ual. She did not iden­ti­fy any­one by name but for­mer par­ty leader Bas­deo Pan­day is set to as­sist a slate of can­di­dates in the March 24 elec­tion to chal­lenge the in­cum­bent Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ex­ec­u­tive. "You own this par­ty, not the leader or any mem­ber of Na­tex-our na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive," she added.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said UNC chair­man, Jack Warn­er was re­spon­si­ble for paving sev­er­al roads across the coun­try. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a new post of par­ty om­buds­man will be cre­at­ed to hear and in­ves­ti­gate par­ty com­plaints and re­port to the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive. She said pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to re­call non-per­form­ing MPs will be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment in a few months' time. "If your rep­re­sen­ta­tive is not work­ing you would have the right to de­mand that he or she is called to ac­count. You can fire your rep­re­sen­ta­tive," she said. She said leg­is­la­tion to en­sure fixed dates for elec­tions and term lim­its will al­so be pre­sent­ed.

"We are stronger than ever, we are in­vin­ci­ble," she in­sist­ed. Mean­while, Pan­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, said the UNC had been to­tal­ly tak­en over by the PP Gov­ern­ment. He said the par­ty should "al­ways re­main sep­a­rate from the Gov­ern­ment so that it can speak to the Gov­ern­ment on cer­tain mat­ters at cer­tain times." He said be­cause the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive had so many min­is­ters the par­ty mem­ber­ship is be­ing treat­ed like dirt and ig­nored. He said the UNC colour has been changed. He said the par­ty's colour is now yel­low when it was sup­posed to be or­ange. Pan­day said he was not aware if the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive had been meet­ing. He said he re­mained com­mit­ted to an­swer­ing the call by some UNC mem­bers to re­claim the par­ty when the next ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions are held on March 24.