JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

At­tor­ney-at-law, Lar­ry Lal­la, who is con­test­ing the po­si­tion of par­ty chair­man in the up­com­ing UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions for the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate, says the Op­po­si­tion Leader is al­ready dis­play­ing non-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ten­den­cies.

On to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Lal­la said the UNC's Mon­day Night Fo­rum has be­come “a cam­paign car­a­van”.

“The re­sources of the par­ty that would nor­mal­ly be di­rect­ed to­wards what they call the Mon­day Night Fo­rum have been con­vert­ed in­to an in­ter­nal elec­tion cam­paign ap­pa­ra­tus,” Lal­la not­ed, “with the leader of the par­ty—who is not con­test­ing any post in the elec­tion—com­ing out and open­ly en­dors­ing a slate of can­di­dates say­ing, ‘This is my team’.”

“That, in my re­spect­ful view,” he said, “does not say a lot about the ex­er­cise of democ­ra­cy in the par­ty.”

Lal­la says fair­ness must be seen with­in the par­ty.

He is hop­ing that the elec­tion com­mit­tee un­der­stands its role in in­still­ing con­fi­dence in the par­ty’s mem­bers that the elec­tion is go­ing to be free and fair.

“The leader, this time de­cid­ed not to be in­volved in the elec­tion as a can­di­date—not putting her of­fice on the line—but ba­si­cal­ly stand­ing be­hind those who are go­ing and pelt­ing big stones at the oth­er side,” Lal­la points out. 

“That is ab­solute­ly crazy! But it is what it is,” he ob­served.

He added: “The mem­bers of the par­ty and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will have a look at it and see how democ­ra­cy is ex­er­cised in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.”

The UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion is sched­uled for June 15, 2024.