The UNC’s boy­cott of Tues­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry meet­ing to op­er­a­tionalise the lo­cal gov­ern­ment law is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of failed lead­er­ship, spine­less­ness by UNC cor­po­ra­tion mem­bers and fail­ure to do what’s good for coun­try and con­stituents, says Dr De­vant Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj is­sued a state­ment on Wednes­day on the “tran­sient head­lines and na­tion­al buzz” on UNC’s re­fusal to par­tic­i­pate in the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, which was geared to be­gin the lo­cal gov­ern­ment law soon.

Ma­haraj said, “This ac­tion is a con­ti­nu­ity of a long line of poor lead­er­ship de­ci­sions by Kam­la’s UNC that has the po­lit­i­cal par­ty in Op­po­si­tion to­day and a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in dri­ving many UNC sup­port­ers from be­ing in­volved with it. The boy­cott al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly showed the lack of any po­lit­i­cal spine of every (UNC) Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive, much like UNC’s par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.”

Ma­haraj crit­i­cised UNC MP Khadi­jah Ameen’s state­ments on the is­sue.

He said, “The UNC has re­vealed that it is loath or un­able to join in the ap­pa­ra­tus of state so in­stead, now the UNC res­i­dents in the boy­cotted cor­po­ra­tions will have to ac­cept what­ev­er the de­ci­sions tak­en at the con­sul­ta­tions and those de­ci­sions the UNC will again gripe it’s un­fair and does not take them in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

“The UNC has nev­er tak­en ac­tion against the al­leged in­equal­i­ty of treat­ment of their cor­po­ra­tions ... in­stead of at­tend­ing the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and us­ing that as a soap­box to high­light their is­sues at a na­tion­al lev­el, al­low­ing the me­dia to re­port on it, the UNC opt­ed to take the lazy route out of stay­ing home,” the state­ment added.

“The death-grip of Kam­la over the of­fice hold­ers of the UNC was, how­ev­er, high­light­ed by this boy­cott. It showed that UNC coun­cil­lors like MPs, sen­a­tors and na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers are on­ly con­cerned about hold­ing on to per­son­al pow­er, which they all see flow from the po­lit­i­cal leader. This self­ish and self-serv­ing mo­tive trumps what is good for coun­try and par­ty ... In the sym­bi­ot­ic ex­change for that, they in turn sup­port Kam­la’s failed lead­er­ship so they’ll be as­sured reap­point­ment come next Lo­cal or Gen­er­al elec­tion,” it added.