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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Bharath: Room for everyone in UNC

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20140603

Any­one who wants to join the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), in­clud­ing Anil Roberts, can do so, Trade, In­vest­ment and act­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath says.His state­ment came on the heels of Roberts's sus­pen­sion from the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) on Mon­day over his fail­ure to co-op­er­ate with the par­ty in the con­tro­ver­sial gan­ja video mat­ter.

Asked yes­ter­day whether there was room for Roberts in the UNC, Bharath said: "That's a very dif­fi­cult ques­tion to an­swer. There's room for every­one in the UNC. The UNC has al­ways been a very in­clu­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion and we wel­come every­one to join the par­ty."Bharath was speak­ing dur­ing the cof­fee break at the 2014 CIBC First Caribbean In­fra­struc­ture Con­fer­ence host­ed by the First Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Asked if the sus­pen­sion would have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, Bharath said: "I don't think it would have any im­pact at this point in time un­til a de­ci­sion has been fi­nalised with re­gard to Mr Roberts. The Prime Min­is­ter has pro­nounced on that and there is very lit­tle that I can add oth­er than what she has said."

Giv­ing an up­date on the in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­cern­ing the Sport for Life pro­gramme, Bharath said it was on­go­ing and with­in one week the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were ex­pect­ed to be con­clud­ed. Re­fer­ring to the gan­ja video, he said it al­so was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.Asked about the quick ac­tion tak­en against for­mer min­is­ters Chan­dresh Shar­ma and Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, Bharath said sim­i­lar ac­tion could not be tak­en against Roberts.

He ex­plained: "Po­lice re­ports were made on those two mat­ters (Ra­mad­hars­ingh and Shar­ma). This has not been the case as far as I am aware with any­one."The Prime Min­is­ter has to con­sid­er the grav­i­ty of the is­sue.At the end of the day you can't have a sit­u­a­tion where every sin­gle ac­cu­sa­tion made against every gov­ern­ment min­is­ter would be act­ed up­on by the Prime Min­is­ter.

"It has to be based on some fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion. We are not go­ing to be di­vert­ed from the work of the Gov­ern­ment. De­ci­sions must be made on fact."


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