Gail Alexan­der

Lead­er­ship chal­lenger Vas­ant Bharath says the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress needs to change its lead­er­ship or it will face 20 more years in op­po­si­tion.

The Par­lia­men­tary Op­po­si­tion al­so hasn't stood up to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing on press­ing na­tion­al is­sues such as the re­cent cut­ting of ed­u­ca­tion fund­ing, he added at a meet­ing last night where he launched his slate for the De­cem­ber 6 in­ter­nal elec­tions.

"This elec­tion is about one cold fact: Who could best po­si­tion the UNC to re­turn to gov­ern­ment, where it right­ful­ly be­longs. It's about gov­ern­ment in five years or less or op­po­si­tion for the next 20," Bharath said.

"You must make the change, as you did in 2009 (chang­ing the Pan­day lead­er­ship), a change that led to an over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry at the polls. That time is here again, when we must sum­mon up the courage to do the right thing."

He added,"While pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ments are deep­en­ing in­vest­ments in ed­u­ca­tion, this use­less, in­ef­fi­cient PNM has slashed its spend­ing in this sec­tor and closed four im­por­tant UTT cam­pus­es. At the same time, PNM's dish­ing out more than $1 bil­lion in fund­ing to URP and CEPEP - clear in­di­ca­tion of this Gov­ern­ment’s twist­ed fo­cus and pri­or­i­ties.

"The ma­jor re­duc­tion in GATE fund­ing is ir­ra­tional, short-sight­ed and reck­less and threat­ens to ex­clude many bright stu­dents who are un­able to pay for ad­vanced ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. De­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are spend­ing more on ed­u­ca­tion to make their so­ci­eties more ed­u­cat­ed and qual­i­fied - in T&T we're do­ing the op­po­site!"

He said many stud­ies show a lack of ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion in­vari­ably leads to lack of op­por­tu­ni­ty and sub­se­quent crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. But he said as crime in­creas­es, Gov­ern­ment will to­mor­row seek a 30-month ex­ten­sion for the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion which hasn't root­ed out gang­sters.

And he called on the Prime Min­is­ter to apol­o­gise to Janelle Pen­ny Com­mis­siong for the poor state of Queen Street - which now bears her name - af­ter the PM's re­marks that the street is “the of­fi­cial toi­let of Port-of-Spain.”

Bharath said, "He should be ashamed! Port-of-Spain has a PNM May­or and is rep­re­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment by PNM."

He said amidst the press­ing na­tion­al is­sues, the Op­po­si­tion has more or less been silent, save for a me­dia con­fer­ence and Mon­day Night Fo­rum.

"Is this enough to make PNM un­com­fort­able or un­seat them? In­stead of con­fronting PNM, a large part of the fo­rum was spent at­tack­ing our cam­paign. UNC is mak­ing no im­pact against a re­pres­sive, au­to­crat­ic and dan­ger­ous­ly in­com­pe­tent Gov­ern­ment.

"The PNM is do­ing lit­er­al­ly as it wants, know­ing full well it would es­cape Op­po­si­tion scruti­ny and will not be called up­on to ac­count. In no mod­ern democ­ra­cy, with an ef­fi­cient op­po­si­tion, would a gov­ern­ment be per­mit­ted to cal­lous­ly slash its in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion. In many coun­tries, there would be pub­lic protests."

He said the par­ty should be grate­ful for Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship and her stew­ard­ship of gov­ern­ment for five years.

How­ev­er, he added, "We must ac­knowl­edge she no longer dis­plays the tenac­i­ty, sta­mi­na and will to ef­fec­tive­ly chal­lenge an au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment. She hasn't un­veiled fresh vi­sion that will ex­cite the par­ty and at­tract the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

"Re­tire­ment's in­evitable for every­one. Bri­an Lara had to do so af­ter an il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer. So, too, Curt­ley Am­brose, Michael Hold­ing, Sachin Ten­dulkar, Muham­mad Ali, Michael Jor­dan, Pele and even one day Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachan.

"We must thank her for her ser­vice and as­sure her that her lega­cy will be well se­cured but she must un­der­stand her con­tin­ued in­sis­tence to re­main at UNC's helm can on­ly lead to de­feat and fail­ure at elec­toral polls and con­tin­ued dis­ap­point­ment for sup­port­ers."
Bharath said some con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives are be­ing forced to is­sue state­ments sup­port­ing her.

"Some are sign­ing against their will. Many re­fused! They're qui­et­ly reach­ing out to us and apol­o­gis­ing," he said.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vas­ant's slate

The Vas­ant Bharath's slate in­cludes ed­u­ca­tor/au­thor Dr Ram­c­hand Ram­per­sad con­test­ing the post of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer. Cam­paign of­fi­cials said he's the broth­er of po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, who's on the UNC's Elec­tions Man­age­ment com­mit­tee.

Deputy leader can­di­dates are for­mer Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al, for­mer Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Man­age­ment head and sur­geon Dr Stephen Ram­roop and well-known busi­ness­man Joe Pires (Caribbean Chem­i­cals head).

At­tor­neys on the slate are Lar­ry Lal­la (for chair­man), Naz­ma Ali-Knox (re­search of­fi­cer) and Kami­ni Ram­raj (elec­tions of­fi­cer), plus re­tired po­lice sergeant Chu­ni­lal Be­dassie (for pol­i­cy/strat­e­gy of­fi­cer).

Can­di­dates in­clude de­feat­ed UNC Lopinot Bon air gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date Prakash Williams, a re­tired school prin­ci­pal (par­ty or­gan­is­er) and UNC gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­nee and chef Ja­son Pe­ru (North­west­ern co-or­di­na­tor)

Oth­er can­di­dates are:

Deputy chair­man - (busi­ness­man) Her­shael Rame­sar

Trea­sur­er - (busi­ness­man) Win­ston Siri­ram.

Pol­i­cy/Strat­e­gy of­fi­cer - Chu­ni­lal Be­dassie

In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions of­fi­cer - (South busi­ness­man/play­wright) Joey Har­ry­nanan

North East­ern co-or­di­na­tor - (hair styl­ist) Can­dice Mo­han

Cen­tral co­or­di­na­tor - An­drew Mun­gal.

South­ern co-or­di­na­tor - busi­ness­man Anil Ramjit.

To­ba­go Co-or­di­na­tor - (ra­dio show host) Bar­ring­ton "Skip­py" Thomas.

Skip­py slams Wade Mark

Team Bharath can­di­date Bar­ring­ton "Skip­py" Thomas has called out UNC sen­a­tor Wade Mark af­ter Mark at­tacked Vas­ant Bharath on Mon­day.

Speak­ing at a meet­ing last night, Thomas said, "I ad­vise you from my heart my broth­er, don’t sell your soul for a sen­a­to­r­i­al ap­point­ment. I call on you to de­sist from be­ing used by oth­ers who wish­es to re­main sacro­sanct but have no dif­fi­cul­ty with you do­ing the job of open­ly ly­ing on oth­ers and de­fam­ing oth­ers. I know you have it in you to be de­cent - deep down."

He al­so called out UNC MP Michelle Ben­jamin on "lies" that Vas­ant Bharath cam­paigned for the PNM's Win­ston Pe­ters. Thomas said he's a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist like Ben­jamin and lies weren't part of their teach­ings.

He al­so said To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions shall be an­nounced short­ly.

"But where's our par­ty’s na­tion­al per­spec­tive? It seem as if To­ba­go has been com­plete­ly aban­doned by a UNC led by sis­ter Kam­la. We had in 2001 a mem­ber­ship of over 4,000 in To­ba­go. I ask sis­ter Kam­la and Bheemal “wey dey gorn?"

Thomas, a UNC stal­wart, said he be­came dis­ap­point­ed with UNC's leader when "she re­lin­quished her lead­er­ship re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to Dev Tan­coo and oth­ers."

He said she hadn't cleared the air on whether she'd pre­pared the elec­tion man­u­al while be­ing a can­di­date in the elec­tion.

"The prob­lem is self­ish­ness, the prob­lem is lazi­ness, pet­ti­ness, medi­oc­rity, mega­lo­ma­nia - in short, Kam­la’s re­sis­tance to uni­ty. This move­ment isn't about dis­plac­ing sis­ter Kam­la, this move­ment is about res­cu­ing our great par­ty."

He said the most un­pop­u­lar Prime Min­ster now has a free pass to do what­ev­er he wants "as long as Kam­la is UNC leader."