Gail Alexan­der

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' Vas­ant Bharath, Ra­mona Ram­di­al, De­vant Ma­haraj and Lar­ry Lal­la have all pelt­ed back re­spons­es to par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's crit­i­cism and chal­lenge for de­trac­tors to chal­lenge her for the lead­er­ship.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued the "fight" call at the UNC's Mon­day night "Re­port" meet­ing, where she al­so de­vot­ed time to fight­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment.

On UNC is­sues, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she'd seen some peo­ple cry­ing like "lit­tle ants or flies" and said she will bat­tle her chal­lengers in the in­ter­nal elec­tion.

"I un­der­stand they're look­ing for some­one who wants to chal­lenge me as none of them want to put their name next to mine. So don't wor­ry... that is the democ­ra­cy is it not? Some peo­ple didn't get a seat, whether in the Sen­ate or Low­er House and they vex...they want to mash up the whole cas­tle, they want to mash up every­thing. But they will not suc­ceed and they know they won't suc­ceed," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

"So you know what hap­pened? They're not call­ing for the in­ter­nal elec­tion. You know if you re­al­ly tru­ly want­ed to play a part in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, you'd call for the elec­tion. No. They want me to re­sign. I am not re­sign­ing. I will call and the par­ty will call for the in­ter­nal elec­tion when it's due."

The in­ter­nal elec­tion is ex­pect­ed lat­er this year.

Bharath was among those who re­spond­ed di­rect­ly to Per­sad- Bisses­sar.

He said, “I, like most peo­ple, be­lieved and would have ex­pect­ed Mon­day’s UNC meet­ing to have been a post mortem of why UNC lost elec­tion yet again. But it was the same tired com­men­tary and for­mu­la that’s so of­ten failed.

"Hold­ing on to at all costs and putting her­self above the par­ty’s needs is among the usu­al hall­marks of dic­ta­tors – as is re­fer­ring to peo­ple as 'ants and flies' and al­so say­ing as Mrs Per­sad- Bisses­sar did, that none of her chal­lengers could 'nev­er hope to be as bright as she is'. These are al­most hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, delu­sion­al re­marks."

On if he’ll seek lead­er­ship, Bharath said briefly with­out com­ment­ing fur­ther, “She’s called out chal­lengers – I’m more than hap­py to par­tic­i­pate in re­build­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion,”

Bharath un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the lead­er­ship in 2015. He'd al­so in­di­cat­ed in­ten­tion to con­test in 2017 but didn't af­ter cit­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the vot­ing process.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was with­in her right to want to con­test the lead­er­ship again but he not­ed that un­der the West­min­ster sys­tem T&T fol­lows, de­feat­ed lead­ers nor­mal­ly step aside and al­low their par­ty to breathe.

"As Ja­maica’s Pe­ter Phillips did re­cent­ly...." Bharath said.

He said lead­ers en­joy in­cum­ben­cy and usu­al­ly as a re­sult, have strate­gies based on par­ty ma­chin­ery and loy­al­ty from of­fi­cers and mem­bers. But Bharath said re­lin­quish­ing of­fice as­sists the par­ty to have the nec­es­sary growth to fight an elec­tion.

"UNC des­per­ate­ly needs re­forms. Every in­sti­tu­tion is bro­ken. It doesn’t al­low mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in any re­build­ing process­es. That needs to change if we are to com­pete in elec­tions."

For­mer UNC Cou­va North MP Ram­di­al, who's re­cent­ly chal­lenged is­sues in the par­ty, said she felt Per­sad-Bisses­sar was re­fer­ring to all pos­si­ble con­tenders. But not­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ref­er­ence to "woman to woman," she agreed she'd been very vo­cal re­cent­ly call­ing out the UNC on a lack of post-elec­tion analy­sis and is­sues with the Na­tex and the gen­er­al sec­re­tary and PRO main­tain­ing posts al­though they're now elect­ed MPs.

Ram­di­al added, "Some­one may want to muz­zle me but that won't in­tim­i­date me. When the par­ty calls polls, we'll see ... I'd con­sid­er con­test­ing a post but not the lead­er­ship at this time. I'll sup­port a can­di­date for that post. It de­pends on whose name comes up."

She added, "The leader ap­par­ent­ly launched her cam­paign (Mon­day). I'm very dis­ap­point­ed in the state­ments. How­ev­er, will this lead­er­ship elec­tion al­so in­volve a UNC Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion since the Na­tex's poll is over­due by two years.”

Ma­haraj who's led calls for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to "go" and put up a fresh bill­board with that call on Tues­day, added. "The leader's as­ser­tion that she's brighter than oth­ers in the UNC and isn't step­ping down reeks of ar­ro­gance and hubris. Giv­en the kinder­garten crop of MPs im­posed for the gen­er­al elec­tion, Kam­la maybe in­deed the smartest of the lot - but by no stretch of the imag­i­na­tion is she the smartest per­son in UNC."

At­tor­ney Lal­la said he hasn’t de­cid­ed if he’d con­test the elec­tion. He said he’d sup­port some­one for the lead­er­ship whom he thinks might bet­ter po­si­tion the UNC.

Lal­la added, “It’s rather un­for­tu­nate the po­lit­i­cal leader would see fit to use the par­ty’s vir­tu­al fo­rum to launch her per­son­al cam­paign for leader. The ob­vi­ous ques­tion aris­ing is whether she’ll af­ford the same op­por­tu­ni­ty to any­one who de­cides to chal­lenge her - would they be al­lowed time on UNC’s vir­tu­al meet­ing to al­so launch their cam­paign?”

“Com­ing out of two re­cent con­sec­u­tive elec­tion loss­es she hasn’t cho­sen a path that gives any con­fi­dence that she’s learned from those loss­es. The UNC's suf­fered tremen­dous­ly un­der her. Fore­most in my mind is the par­ty’s in­ter­ests and the coun­try’s go­ing for­ward - UNC isn’t in busi­ness to fight for sec­ond place con­tin­u­ous­ly.”