Gail Alexan­der

A num­ber of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­bers, in­clud­ing young peo­ple, are urg­ing Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Vas­ant Bharath to en­ter the par­ty's lead­er­ship race and he has been con­sult­ing var­i­ous UNC con­stituen­cies in re­cent weeks, it has been con­firmed.

A spokesman said Bharath will like­ly an­nounce by the end of the week what ac­tion he would pur­sue–whether con­test­ing or not.

Sources close to Bharath con­firmed Tues­day night that he had been hav­ing meet­ings with var­i­ous con­stituen­cies in­clud­ing Cou­va South mem­bers, Tu­na­puna and oth­er ar­eas and par­ty units to un­der­stand the feel­ings on the "ground" and de­cide whether he should con­test.

They said it had been not­ed there was still sup­port for in­cum­bent leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as well as grow­ing sup­port for sole chal­lenger to date, Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

They con­firmed Bharath had al­so not­ed di­vi­sions among par­tic­u­lar UNC units on the is­sue.

Mean­while, UNC of­fi­cials af­ter Wednes­day's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, said they were not aware of any le­gal chal­lenge in the off­ing to the elec­tion process but "wouldn't be sur­prised if there might be."

Sources said if any chal­lenge came, it might be from Mooni­lal's side since there have been "whis­pers" of this. They said: "Ini­tial­ly, Mooni­lal was very con­fi­dent and now his camp ap­pears to be con­cerned about things."

Mooni­lal didn't an­swer calls yes­ter­day. Some mem­bers of his team said they were un­aware of any chal­lenges be­ing con­sid­ered.

An­oth­er Bharath in the par­ty, for­mer coun­cil­lor Prakash Bharath, as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of UNC's Tu­na­puna ex­ec­u­tive, has ad­mit­ted there were some ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers with dif­fer­ing views on the lead­er­ship is­sue.

He said he sup­port­ed giv­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­oth­er three years un­til the next lead­er­ship elec­tion in 2018 to try and re­brand and rein­vig­o­rate the UNC. He said the po­si­tion was out­lined by ac­tivists, him­self and oth­er Tu­na­puna mem­bers at a brief­ing on Tues­day.

But he stressed that group didn't speak for the ex­ec­u­tive and that brief­ing didn't fea­ture UNC Tu­na­puna chair­man Ham­lyn Jailal.

He al­so de­nied the group had been man­dat­ed to hold its brief­ing by UNC hi­er­ar­chy or lead­er­ship of­fi­cials.

He said: "I can't speak for the en­tire ex­ec­u­tive but we called a brief­ing on Tues­day be­cause se­nior ac­tivists, area man­agers, the rank and file are telling us they strong­ly want to re­tain the in­cum­bent leader.

"Peo­ple be­lieve los­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion wasn't en­tire­ly her fault.

"Peo­ple around her gave her ad­vice, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) had lost pop­u­lar­i­ty in the East-West Cor­ri­dor but the UNC still per­formed cred­itably since the par­ty won 17 of the 18 seats the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ob­tained."

"She's still vi­brant and loved. We've sug­gest­ed, the par­ty can give her three years to do the nec­es­sary work to re­turn to gov­ern­ment and if there are changes, the MPs and rank and file want af­ter that, then so be it."