Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Par­ty or­gan­is­er of the UNC Chan­dresh Shar­ma said the elec­tion ma­chin­ery has kicked in and the par­ty is ready to con­test the Ch­agua­nas West seat, now that its has been of­fi­cial­ly de­clared va­cant.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter he ad­dressed a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Bill 2013 at the Pas­sage to Asia restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day, Shar­ma said the var­i­ous arms in the par­ty are ready for the by-elec­tion which is ex­pect­ed to come with­in the next 90 days. Shar­ma said the par­ty's screen­ing com­mit­tee is part of the ex­ec­u­tive so it does not have to be re­con­sti­tut­ed for the elec­tion to take place.

"That al­ways ob­tains," he said, adding that the in­ter­nal elec­tion mech­a­nisms would be­gin once the elec­tion date is de­clared.Shar­ma ex­plained their mem­bers are fo­cused in dif­fer­ent ar­eas. "You have those who are do­ing the screen­ing, those who are do­ing cam­paign­ing, those who are do­ing mes­sag­ing, those who are do­ing field work for when that time comes," he said.

The Trans­port Min­is­ter dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and for­mer MP Jack Warn­er were in­volved in a pub­lic tit-for-tat."There is no tit-for-tat. It is good me­dia cov­er­age be­cause you have to keep the coun­try ex­cit­ed and some peo­ple find dif­fer­ent ways to do it," he said.

Com­ment­ing on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment on Tues­day that any UNC mem­ber who con­tests elec­tions on an in­de­pen­dent tick­et would face ex­pul­sion from the par­ty, Shar­ma said that it is the rule."All po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions the UNC, the COP (Con­gress of the Peo­ple) and oth­ers will have rules of en­gage­ment and the rules of en­gage­ment have to be ob­served by all play­ers," he said.

"So that will ob­tain in any or­gan­i­sa­tions, whether it is the PNM (Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment), the UNC, the NAR (Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion). It is no dif­fer­ent in that con­text," he said.The Fyz­abad MP dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that he was part of a ca­bal in the Cab­i­net."There is no room for a ca­bal...There is room for in­tel­li­gence at work at all times and keep­ing to the law at all the time," he said.He said talk of a ca­bal in the Gov­ern­ment was noth­ing new since such al­le­ga­tions were made un­der all regimes, in­clud­ing the PNM.