Gail Alexan­der

Su­san Charles who has re­signed from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC’s) San Juan Barataria ex­ec­u­tive, has called for mem­bers to “take back the par­ty” in or­der for it to be­come a ve­hi­cle that can as­sume the reins of Gov­ern­ment and de­liv­er to peo­ple.

Charles did so via re­lease yes­ter­day, knock­ing the lead­er­ship of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Charles said she was a UNC mem­ber for 31 years. Her state­ment was the lat­est from some UNC mem­bers seek­ing to pres­sure the lead­er­ship to step down. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said she will not do so and has chal­lenged de­trac­tors to fight her for the lead­er­ship in in­ter­nal polls.

Charles, how­ev­er, not­ed how the UNC was formed by Bas­deo Pan­day and as­so­ciates. She added, “It was the faith, courage, de­ter­mi­na­tion, com­mit­ment and hard work of these peo­ple that caused that small group of de­ter­mined spir­its to as­cend to the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in 1995 and de­liv­er on promis­es to the peo­ple.”

“To­day, once again we’re on the edge of the precipice where we re­quire an­oth­er group of per­sons with a de­ter­mined spir­it to come to­geth­er and be in­spired by an un­quench­able faith in sav­ing our na­tion.”

“I was one of the most loy­al sup­port­ers of Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar…I con­sid­ered her like a ‘gu­ru.’ My loy­al­ty was un­ques­tion­able but my loy­al­ty to my par­ty must al­ways come first. In my 31 years as a UNC mem­ber, I learnt no in­di­vid­ual is greater than the in­sti­tu­tion. The day we al­low that, the in­sti­tu­tion is no more.”

Charles not­ed that over the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s term up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions, that en­ti­ty lost 11 of its 29 seats.

“Not a sin­gle at­tempt was made by those re­spon­si­ble to un­der­stand why the pop­u­la­tion lost con­fi­dence in our par­ty.”

“Be­tween 2015 and 2020 peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enced the most dif­fi­cult times un­der the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion. The cir­cum­stances were ripe for change... we stood be­hind our par­ty and our leader. We gave her our sup­port a sec­ond time. But when can­di­dates were cho­sen the in­ten­tion was not to choose the best qual­i­fied but to pre­serve the po­si­tion of the leader in case we ex­pe­ri­enced de­feat.”

Charles added, “To­day, I must de­cide whether to sit back and con­tin­ue see­ing my par­ty lose all that it’s stood for and built dur­ing the past 31 years or join a group of de­ter­mined spir­its fired. Those who know (me) know I’m not one to sit back and fol­low blind­ly.”

“The time has come. We must each stand up to those who’ve been giv­en a fair chance and have failed us not twice. The time has come when we must ac­cept that when those re­spon­si­ble for the demise of our par­ty don’t wish to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ac­tions, they don’t de­serve to hold po­si­tions of lead­er­ship any longer. We must take back our par­ty to give our coun­try a chance and to give us a chance to make good on the promise we made to our coun­try when the UNC was formed.

“The par­ty’s mot­to is ‘We are the Fu­ture.’ I ask you to ask your­self, “do those in charge of our par­ty to­day rep­re­sent your fu­ture, the fu­ture of your chil­dren and our coun­try?” If not the de­ci­sion is clear!”