Some el­e­ments of the PP ap­pear bent on "UNC-fy­ing" the coali­tion Part­ner­ship, says for­mer sen­a­tor Patrick Wat­son.Wat­son, who was re­moved as a PP sen­a­tor in the re­cent Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, said yes­ter­day he did not think his time to leave the Cab­i­net had come.He said he was ho­n­oured to serve, had a good year and ap­pre­ci­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve. Wat­son said he would con­tin­ue to as­sist Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an if re­quest­ed.

He said he had not in­tend­ed to leave at this point. He said he was told by the Prime Min­is­ter last week­end that there had been an un­der­stand­ing that he would have be­come a min­is­ter even­tu­al­ly-though no of­fer of min­is­te­r­i­al post was made-and that she need­ed space to ap­point more min­is­ters.He said he was al­so told that the Prime Min­is­ter need­ed to bring peo­ple in to de­fend Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.Wat­son added: "I al­ways thought I de­fend­ed it. But I'm thank­ful to the Prime Min­is­ter to have served though I have mixed feel­ings on the re­moval. I didn't think my time had come to go.

"While I re­main com­mit­ted to the PP, I'm a lit­tle con­cerned about the reshuf­fle since-and I wish I was wrong-some el­e­ments seem bent on UNC-fy­ing the PP."Not the Prime Min­is­ter, but cer­tain peo­ple there and it's ev­i­dent the way some ap­point­ments were made the COP is be­ing mar­gin­alised and UNC peo­ple are get­ting the strongest posts."Wat­son said the UNC could not win elec­tion on its own since the coali­tion era was here to stay.How­ev­er, for­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Nan Ram­goolam, tipped to be­come T&T's con­sul gen­er­al to New York, said she was ful­ly sup­port­ive of the Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sions:

Ram­goolam added: "You serve at the PM's be­hest. I abide by her de­ci­sion. She's a ter­rif­ic leader and there is no ac­ri­mo­ny on my part I'm ful­ly sup­port­ive of her de­ci­sions. "She did say it was a re­align­ment of her team and where she choos­es to place peo­ple, she has the pow­er to so do." (GA)