Richard Lord

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) may not be in­vin­ci­ble on a na­tion­al land­scape. He was re­spond­ing to a claim by Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a UNC meet­ing at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, on Tues­day night. Per­sad Bisses­sar said: "We are stronger than ever. We are in­vin­ci­ble. We are the UNC, unit­ed." Ra­goonath said the UNC might be in­vin­ci­ble with­in its own con­text but not at the na­tion­al lev­el. He felt the UNC could not win an elec­tion on its own.

In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ra­goonath said the UNC still need­ed the sup­port of the part­ner­ship mem­bers - the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion for the Peo­ple (TOP) , the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) and the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ). He said it must be not­ed the lead­ers of the part­ner­ship were ex­pect­ed to meet soon to dis­cuss is­sues af­fect­ing the Gov­ern­ment. Ra­goonath al­so re­spond­ed to ques­tions on the de­ci­sion by Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod to re­sign as leader of the labour-based par­ty. He said it was a bal­anc­ing act. He said McLeod was seem­ing­ly hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty as min­is­ter with the al­leged five per cent ceil­ing for wages and salaries be­ing of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment.

He not­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers in T&T were strong­ly op­posed to that pro­pos­al. Ra­goonath said McLeod's de­ci­sion might have been in the best in­ter­est of all con­cerned. Ra­goonath said the is­sue of McLeod's res­ig­na­tion from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was very un­like­ly.