Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

One po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst says pre­vi­ous sup­port of a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date is not an in­di­ca­tion that Pun­dit of the Char­lieville Shiv Mandir, Satyanand Dubey is a PNM op­er­a­tive.

 Dubey is be­ing ac­cused of be­ing a PNM op­er­a­tive by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Shane Mo­hammed, who spoke dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, said the pun­dit’s show of sup­port for an op­pos­ing can­di­date was an in­di­ca­tion that Dubey was will­ing to sup­port the can­di­date he be­lieved was best for the job, as op­posed to blind­ly hav­ing par­ty loy­al­ty.

On Sun­day, Dubey en­cour­aged his con­gre­ga­tion to sup­port Rush­ton Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate in Sat­ur­day’s UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions, say­ing that the Op­po­si­tion Leader did not look out for her own peo­ple and ac­cus­ing her of dis­lik­ing Hin­dus.

How­ev­er, Dr Mo­hammed said, some mem­bers of the UNC might be dis­con­tent­ed and will­ing to put coun­try be­fore par­ty. He said sup­port of a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date was not nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­port of that can­di­date’s par­ty.

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ac­quired a rep­u­ta­tion where per­sons have got­ten quite fed up of her re­quir­ing loy­al­ty, you must be loy­al to her, but she is loy­al to her­self, and loy­al­ty is some­thing that is a two-lane street, it doesn’t work in one way, that you must pan­der and be loy­al to the leader,” he said.

Mo­hammed added that the Op­po­si­tion leader’s sup­port of the Star Team slate was un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic

He said, “I think it is high­ly dis­taste­ful and un­eth­i­cal that Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar is on a Star Team plat­form, sup­port­ing a team when she re­fus­es to put her­self up for re-elec­tion and to con­test the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the par­ty, which I said al­so was her pre­rog­a­tive.

“I al­so be­lieve that she owes it to both sides to stay out of the elec­tion cam­paign and  let the Star Team stand on their own mer­it against the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots”

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha has ex­pressed its dis­agree­ment with the pun­dit’s state­ment.