Gail Alexan­der

There will be no Cab­i­net reshuf­fle in ear­ly May. That was the word yes­ter­day from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who struck down a re­port in a news­pa­per (not the T&T Guardian) that she planned to reshuf­fle her Cab­i­net then. The re­port said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was go­ing to "re­align" the port­fo­lios of Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan.

Con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian on the claim, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a flat "no" to the idea of an ear­ly May reshuf­fle. In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Ram­bachan has said he had no knowl­edge of a reshuf­fle. Yes­ter­day oth­er min­is­ters said they did not know of it ei­ther. Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, speak­ing to re­porters in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, al­so dis­missed the re­port.

A gov­ern­ment source said if there were to be a reshuf­fle, it would not be then. More im­me­di­ate­ly, Per­sad-Bisses­sar meets to­day with her fel­low lead­ers in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship for their third leg of talks on part­ner­ship is­sues, in­clud­ing the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's call for the re­moval of San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray.

COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, who went off on a three-week va­ca­tion last week, was sched­uled to re­turn home last night for the meet­ing, COP gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ni­rad Tewarie said. On the eve of to­day's meet­ing, the PP's prob­lems yes­ter­day fea­tured in the Sen­ate via Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh's con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate on the Postal Cor­po­ra­tion Amend­ment Bill.

Say­ing there was pub­lic squab­bling, Deyals­ingh want­ed to know if as­pects of the plan were UNC or COP. He added: "We have just come out of East­er and what we have seen in the na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal land­scape is be­tray­al, de­nial and wash­ing of the hands of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by peo­ple elect­ed to gov­ern."

Say­ing the sit­u­a­tion was po­lit­i­cal "mad­ness and lu­na­cy," Deyals­ingh said for in­stance, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie had di­vorced him­self from in­fight­ing on the San Fer­nan­do wa­ter­front project. PP lead­ers met on March 29 and April 2 to dis­cuss part­ner­ship is­sues. These in­clud­ed the Coudray is­sue, which arose af­ter Coudray's de­fec­tion to the UNC.

The is­sue has re­tard­ed part­ner­ship talks to date. But rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all sides said yes­ter­day that they ex­pect­ed some head­way at to­day's meet­ing. A UNC source hint­ed that pro­pos­als were on the ta­ble for Coudray to be ap­point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment's Sen­ate team.

They said the pro­pos­al in­clud­ed pos­si­bly hav­ing Coudray re­place sen­ate vice pres­i­dent Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit. Ou­dit, who had been among the UNC's three deputy lead­ers since 2010, led the Sen­ate yes­ter­day in the ab­sence of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith.

Sources not­ed that Ou­dit did not con­test the UNC deputy lead­er­ship again in March, and lost her fight for par­ty vice chair­man­ship. The UNC source not­ed that Ou­dit there­fore no longer held high par­ty of­fice and has been re­placed by Coudray as the fe­male face among UNC's three deputy lead­ers.

The oth­er deputies are Roodal Mooni­lal and Ram­bachan, who had served be­fore. Var­i­ous PP sources said they ex­pect­ed to­day's meet­ing to move "a bit" fur­ther in try­ing to re­solve the Coudray is­sue. They said the last two meet­ings went a long way to­wards work­ing out out­stand­ing is­sues such as rules of en­gage­ment for the Part­ner­ship, un­der­pin­nings to strength­en it, and fo­rums to deal with im­pass­es such as the Coudray af­fair.