Shas­tri Boodan

Vas­ant Bharath and his slate has dropped out of the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions race.

Bharath made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas.

He said the elec­tion process was flawed and that he would have noth­ing to do with it.

The for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter said be­cause of the il­le­gal­i­ty of the elec­tion any UNC mem­ber can chal­lenge the re­sults in a court of law and called for the res­ig­na­tion of the UNC’s Elec­tions Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee.

He ac­cused the com­mit­tee mem­bers of show­ing open bias to­wards Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Bharath said he is not con­tem­plat­ing le­gal ac­tion at this time as he and his co­horts would re­main loy­al UNC mem­bers.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the UNC un­der the lead­er­ship of Per­sad-Bisses­sar would not see the cor­ri­dors of pow­er should a gen­er­al elec­tion be called.

Bharath said, “It is with much re­gret to the thou­sands of elec­tors with­in the rank and file of the UNC who seek mean­ing­ful change at the lev­el of its lead­er­ship in or­der to set the par­ty on the path of a great vic­to­ry over the PNM and a re­turn to gov­ern­ment, that I say I can­not and will not lead any group in­to this cha­rade of il­le­gal­i­ty. It is time we re­turn to those trea­sured val­ues of hon­esty, de­cen­cy and ci­vil­i­ty. My group and I shall there­fore not par­tic­i­pate in a poll in which there is no va­can­cy for po­lit­i­cal leader and we shall not par­tic­i­pate in a poll in which the of­fered slate of can­di­dates of the in­cum­bent po­lit­i­cal leader starts at an un­fair and sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tage. We shall not par­tic­i­pate in any elec­tion run by bi­ased and cor­rupt­ed per­sons who seek their own po­lit­i­cal gain.”

He said feed­back from UNC sup­port­ers in­di­cat­ed that they were fed-up with the di­rec­tion in which the par­ty was head­ing.

He said since the an­nounce­ment of the in­ter­nal elec­tion he has penned two let­ters to the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the par­ty re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion on mat­ters of the pub­li­ca­tion of the vot­ers’ list and the avail­abil­i­ty of oth­er in­for­ma­tion. He said eight days af­ter his first let­ter, the Elec­tions Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee (EMC) re­spond­ed but did not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed his con­cerns when it came to equal­i­ty and fair­ness.

Bharath said no one can feel con­fi­dent that the EMC will as­sure fair­ness af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar used the Mon­day Night Fo­rum on No­vem­ber 6 to launch her cam­paign with par­ty funds and at­tack her oth­er par­ty con­tender.

He claimed the EMC has re­fused to date to pro­vide his slate with a re­vised list of elec­tors.