Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has the sup­port of at least sev­en of the 16 oth­er UNC MPs, ac­cord­ing to par­ty in­sid­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is like­ly to face com­pe­ti­tion for the top par­ty post from deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Roodal Mooni­lal and Vas­ant Bharath.

Mooni­lal is call­ing on UNC mem­bers to give him their opin­ion on whether he should con­test the UNC lead­er­ship be­fore he makes a de­ci­sion by week­end.

Say­ing he's hav­ing talks with sup­port­ers and oth­ers out­side the par­ty in­clud­ing found­ing mem­bers, Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day, "I'm call­ing on all mem­bers to reg­is­ter their views with us be­fore any de­ci­sion."

T&T Guardian learned Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been meet­ing sev­er­al MPs on the is­sue. Some have ex­pressed sup­port for her–but sev­er­al oth­ers re­main non-com­mit­tal–and there are ex­pres­sions of sup­port for Mooni­lal from at least four MPs to date.

On Sun­day, San Juan/Barataria MP Fuad Khan, speak­ing from Mex­i­co, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should step down and con­test the post of chair­man. Dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is No­vem­ber 20.

Re­ply­ing to queries in­clud­ing when he'll an­nounce his de­ci­sion, Mooni­lal said the sit­u­a­tion be­fore him is not of his per­son­al mak­ing: "I'm be­ing asked by many peo­ple...it's the view of mem­bers, sup­port­ers, in­cum­bent MPs, coun­cil­lors and chair­men...I've been ap­proached by a lot of peo­ple to go for­ward and be­cause it's a crit­i­cal junc­ture and de­ci­sion, we'd wel­come mem­bers' views on it, Al­so, there have been al­ter­na­tive views emerg­ing in the par­ty–such as Dr Khan's re­cent­ly–and we need to look at those sort of views care­ful­ly."

"I in­tend to speak with Dr Khan on his re­turn to T&T. He's a very se­nior, valu­able mem­ber of our team and the on­ly MP to have won a clear mar­gin­al seat so his views are very im­por­tant to us."

On whether he'd heed­ed Khan's view that oth­er for­mer mem­bers like Jack Warn­er should re­turn, Mooni­lal said he hadn't talked to Warn­er, but had to speak to any mem­ber "...es­pe­cial­ly those who worked very hard over the years and have a greater stake in UNC's fu­ture di­rec­tion."

Say­ing he pre­ferred not to rush the de­ci­sion on a pos­si­ble chal­lenge, he added, he was speak­ing to a wide cross sec­tion of T&T "...par­tic­u­lar­ly found­ing mem­bers...and young pro­fes­sion­als." He made the lat­ter points when asked if he's con­sult­ing with UNC founder Bas­deo Pan­day and daugh­ter Mick­ela.

On whether he be­lieved the bat­tle may dam­age UNC, Mooni­lal said, "In 2010, we were able to mo­bilise for elec­tion very quick­ly af­ter par­ty elec­tions so I don't think a cam­paign can di­vide this par­ty, it has great strength and re­silience, and we have time–I don't ex­pect the PNM Gov­ern­ment to col­lapse tonight."

But at least one UNC MP sup­port­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­pressed con­cern about the ex­er­cise weak­en­ing the Op­po­si­tion.

Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles, said yes­ter­day, "If not prop­er­ly man­aged this elec­tion could se­vere­ly weak­en the UNC. Con­tend­ing fac­tions need to give con­sid­er­a­tion about par­ty be­fore self and make the ap­pro­pri­ate de­ci­sion."

Asked if he felt Per­sad-Bisses­sar still had strong stocks af­ter los­ing five elec­tions over the last term, Charles said, "Any­body who wins UNC's poll will have to face lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls, two by-elec­tions, and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly polls in fu­ture as well as pos­si­ble polls in five seats if the UNC wins its elec­tion pe­ti­tions. One has to fac­tor that in when you talk of los­ing."

Charles was among sev­er­al MPs who at­tend­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship cam­paign launch last Sat­ur­day in Pe­nal. Oth­ers were MPs Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Su­ruj Ram­bachan, Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein and David Lee. But sev­er­al oth­er MPs were ab­sent.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein and Bar­ry Padarath last week ex­pressed sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Padarath said he hadn't been in­vit­ed to the meet­ing, but had gone af­ter learn­ing about it via me­dia. He said it seemed in­vi­ta­tions weren't is­sued and it was a gen­er­al gath­er­ing.

Bharath who didn't at­tend last Sat­ur­day's meet­ing said he hasn't spo­ken to Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the elec­tion.

Whether he's de­cid­ed on con­test­ing, Bharath said he'd been talk­ing "to a lot of peo­ple–clear­ly there are dif­fer­ing views. One has to take all of those in­to ac­count."

MP Rudy In­dars­ingh said he didn't at­tend the event since he was in his con­stituen­cy. He said he hasn't de­cid­ed who he's sup­port­ing.

MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al said she too hadn't at­tend­ed, say­ing, "Ap­par­ent­ly it was a con­stituen­cy thing. I haven't de­cid­ed who I'll sup­port; I know Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is an op­tion, I'm hear­ing Roodal Mooni­lal is an op­tion al­so and there might be a third or fourth."

Dr Tim Gopeesingh, not say­ing "yea" on ei­ther con­tender, said "I'm giv­ing a lot of thought to it and will make a state­ment lat­er on."