Jesse Ramdeo

For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Barataria/San Juan, Dr Fuad Khan, has stat­ed that if he is suc­cess­ful in chal­leng­ing for the lead­er­ship po­si­tion of the par­ty, he will bring back its founder Bas­deo Pan­day.

“The first thing I would ever do if I be­come leader is to bring Mr Pan­day back with me and his daugh­ter Mick­ela,” Khan said.

Khan did not of­fi­cial­ly an­nounce whether he will be throw­ing his hat in­to the race but lament­ed the need for struc­tur­al changes to the in­ter­nal elec­tion sys­tem.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Wednes­day, Khan said the cur­rent elec­tion process was not in ac­cor­dance with pro­ce­dur­al rules.

He said by re­turn­ing for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Pan­day to the par­ty, there can be greater over­sight of de­tailed in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions.

Khan said, “Every­thing about Pan­day has been os­tracised. It would ap­pear that any­body of com­pe­tence, any woman pret­ty and com­pe­tent has to be os­tracised and any per­son who’s worth their sword po­lit­i­cal­ly is os­tracised.

“So if it is just to say that about the mem­ber­ship, that if you want to go for­ward, you can­not go for­ward with the sys­tem that is in place that is made up by the ad­min­is­tra­tive peo­ple as well as the leader.”

Pan­day had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that he had no faith in the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions and that there need­ed to be a dis­con­nect from can­di­dates and or­gan­is­ers of the elec­tions.

Dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Sun­day, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions will be held on June 26.

She said she want­ed the elec­tions out of the way in or­der to pre­pare for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

Khan said yes­ter­day that the time had come for the UNC to be­gin its re­build­ing phase.

Mean­while, for­mer Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al con­firmed she will be con­test­ing the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions.

She al­so re­it­er­at­ed that change was nec­es­sary for a free and fair elec­tion process.

Ram­di­al said, “New lead­er­ship, new ex­ec­u­tive, will def­i­nite­ly not have that pow­er to hold on and to have all the ma­nip­u­la­tions time af­ter time be­cause it ham­pers the par­ty. The last two years, I’m in­formed, no new mem­ber­ship took place, she tried to form mem­ber­ships, she tried to col­lect mem­ber­ship forms to have per­sons join the par­ty and we have been to­tal­ly shut out of that process.”

Ram­di­al urged the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship to come out and cast their votes so that the de­sired change could be achieved.

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