Ken Ali

All three sides are cry­ing foul, as ma­jor con­flict has bro­ken out over the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' (UNC) vot­ers' list. Act­ing chair­man of the par­ty, Vas­ant Bharath, es­ti­mat­ed that a de­tailed ex­er­cise to reg­u­larise the list could take a fort­night. Bharath said a "huge list" of more than 100,000 mem­bers had emerged, while the true num­ber of cur­rent fi­nan­cial sup­port­ers was just more than 30,000. "We don't want the par­ty to be hi­jacked," he stat­ed, in an­nounc­ing that Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment had been man­dat­ed to seek to sani­tise the vot­ers' list. Bharath, who is con­test­ing the chair­man­ship on Bas­deo Pan­day's slate, said: "We need to go through the list to see if there are fic­ti­tious names." Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is chal­leng­ing Pan­day for lead­er­ship of the 20-year-old par­ty, said she was "con­cerned" about the list, but de­clined fur­ther com­ment.

An in­sid­er in Per­sad-Bisses­sar's camp added, though, that the can­di­date was un­able to see an up­dat­ed mem­bers' list or com­plet­ed ap­pli­ca­tion forms. "We are be­ing told there is no plan to pro­vide the full list," he said. He claimed that forms were be­ing with­held from some ap­pli­cants. Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who is al­so con­test­ing the lead­er­ship po­si­tion, was equal­ly up­set, stat­ing that he heard the list had been tam­pered with. Ma­haraj said that in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed that some ap­pli­ca­tion forms could not be found. Fur­ther, he stat­ed that the mem­ber­ship in cer­tain con­stituen­cies rep­re­sent­ed by the UNC in Par­lia­ment num­bered "a mere few hun­dred, while at oth­ers they num­bered sev­er­al thou­sand. There are ma­jor ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties."

Pan­day was up­dat­ed on the sit­u­a­tion dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing strat­e­gy meet­ing of his team on Sun­day, be­fore he flew out for a med­ical check-up and Christ­mas va­ca­tion in Eng­land. Kelvin Ram­nath, chair­man of the mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee, is head­ing the ex­er­cise of reg­u­lar­is­ing the list. The Ram­nath ex­er­cise was ex­pect­ed to take place at his Cou­va South of­fice, some dis­tance from Rien­zi Com­plex. New ap­pli­cants have to be con­sid­ered by the par­ty be­fore they are per­mit­ted to cast their votes. Bharath said a mem­ber­ship list of more than 100,000 was more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of when the UNC was in na­tion­al of­fice. The ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion is sched­uled for Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 24; Nom­i­na­tion Day is Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 11.