Gail Alexan­der

?In­cum­bent leader Bas­deo Pan­day says he has no in­ten­tion of drop­ping out of UNC's elec­tion race. Com­ment­ing on Sat­ur­day's pre­dic­tion by es­tranged UNC MP Jack Warn­er that some­one would drop out of the race, Pan­day said yes­ter­day: "Since Warn­er is sup­port­ing Kay­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Warn­er may be ask­ing (Ramesh Lawrence) Ma­haraj to drop out, but I don't in­tend to...I've nev­er been a drop-out from pri­ma­ry school or Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, so I ent drop­ping out of this race." Pan­day left T&T yes­ter­day for Lon­don where he will un­der­go an­nu­al med­ical checks. He re­turns Jan­u­ary 6.

Pan­day, who said he is act­ing as cam­paign man­ag­er for his team, ex­pressed be­wil­der­ment at Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­dress on Sat­ur­day when she launched her cam­paign, say­ing no one would "keep her down again." (sic) Pan­day asked: "Who has kept her down at any oth­er time? I have no idea what she's talk­ing about...she has been deputy leader of the par­ty." "All I know is that she pre­ma­ture­ly told some news­pa­per that she was go­ing to be leader of the UNC al­liance and when that was not done, she went on a plat­form and said cer­tain things to the tune of 'No Woman, No Cry,'" he said. "So who knows what that was re­al­ly all about." Pan­day's slate for the Jan­u­ary 2010 UNC elec­tion in­cludes cur­rent UNC vice-chair­man Vas­ant Bharath, who will con­test the post of chair­man. (GA)