Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Unit­ed Na­tion­al?Con­gress MPs ral­lied around Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day night de­clar­ing their full con­fi­dence in her lead­er­ship of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. Lead­ing the charge at the par­ty's Mon­day night fo­rum at Tul­sa Trace Hin­du School, Pe­nal, was Na­tion­al?Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack?Warn­er, who pledged his full sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Warn­er, in his ad­dress, de­clared, "A bet­ter leader for this coun­try we can­not find. No bet­ter leader for this coun­try ex­ists to­day." His de­c­la­ra­tion was greet­ed with loud cheers from the packed au­di­ence that braved bad weath­er to at­tend the sec­ond in­stal­ment of the par­ty's Mon­day night fo­rum. Over the past week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar came un­der fire for her han­dling of Dr?Wayne Kublals­ingh's hunger strike from coali­tion mem­bers and mem­bers of civ­il so­ci­ety.

How­ev­er, Warn­er said, "Kam­la is hu­man and I say to you tonight, what a re­mark­able hu­man be­ing." He said she has faced many chal­lenges and on?Sat­ur­day at the UNC's con­gress at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, she bared her soul to the na­tion.

"On­ly some­one who has walked in her shoes can un­der­stand the weight she car­ries on her shoul­ders. On­ly when you walk in her shoes you un­der­stand the bur­den she car­ries and with all of that, she car­ries it mag­nan­i­mous­ly. I want to say that the par­ty stands firm­ly be­hind her," he de­clared. Warn­er re­mind­ed sup­port­ers of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's 25 years of strug­gle and as­cent to the lead­er­ship of the UNC, which he de­scribed as a "labour of love."

The min­is­ter, who had strong­ly crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the past, pledged his al­le­giance. He said life was about choic­es and he chose to be UNC be­cause "it rep­re­sents the kinds of things I want to see for this coun­try." Warn­er said Kublals­ingh, whose hunger strike en­tered day 20 yes­ter­day, made a choice to fast.

"They choose to fast and they be­lieve their life is worth ten miles of a high­way? Go ahead.?We all here tonight choose not to do that be­cause we want to live for our chil­dren and for our coun­try's de­vel­op­ment. We want to join hands with the Prime Min­is­ter to build this coun­try," he said. Lo­cal?Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Sura­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and Trans­port Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma al­so praised the PM.