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Friday, July 25, 2025

UNC launch­es cam­paign to­day

Will unity motion be debated?

by

Gail Alexander
2372 days ago
20190126
Chaguanas West MP Ganga Singh, left, Couva North MP Ramona Ramdial, former UNC Senator Devant Maharaj, former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, MP Faud Khan, former Minister of Works Jack Warner, former Communications Minister under the People’s Partnership fovernment Vasant Bharath and attorney Larry Lalla at a Christmas function in last year.

Chaguanas West MP Ganga Singh, left, Couva North MP Ramona Ramdial, former UNC Senator Devant Maharaj, former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, MP Faud Khan, former Minister of Works Jack Warner, former Communications Minister under the People’s Partnership fovernment Vasant Bharath and attorney Larry Lalla at a Christmas function in last year.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Uni­ty or not?

Up to Sat­ur­day UNC par­ty hi­er­ar­chy of­fi­cials could not say if UNC MP Gan­ga Singh’s uni­ty res­o­lu­tion is on the agen­da for to­day’s UNC As­sem­bly.

“I haven’t seen the agen­da said UNC chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai on Sat­ur­day.

“In our par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion there is a pro­ce­dure for mo­tions and res­o­lu­tions and the gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dave Tan­coo has to make that call (on the res­o­lu­tion). He pre­pares the pro­gramme for the As­sem­bly. He’s over­seas, but he can pre­pare it from there,” he said.

Spec­u­la­tion has been sim­mer­ing whether the uni­ty call will be ap­proved for the As­sem­bly and it may over­take the As­sem­bly’s thrust which is ex­pect­ed to place UNC on an elec­tion foot­ing and open nom­i­na­tions.

Singh and UNC MP Fuad Khan last week sub­mit­ted the res­o­lu­tion for As­sem­bly de­bate on Singh’s call for UNC to seek uni­ty with oth­er groups, bid­ding for a stronger po­lit­i­cal “in­stru­ment” for elec­tions to de­feat the rul­ing PNM.

Singh launched the call last De­cem­ber at a func­tion at­tend­ed by for­mer UNC front­lin­ers Bas­deo Pan­day, Jack Warn­er and Vas­ant Bharath who al­so called for uni­ty.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was cold on the is­sue ini­tial­ly, but af­ter Singh pro­posed the call for As­sem­bly de­bate, she said all were wel­come.

Singh said yes­ter­day he had not re­ceived word if the res­o­lu­tion was ap­proved for the As­sem­bly’s pro­gramme. Tan­coo did not re­ply to calls.

UNC deputy leader David Lee said last Fri­day he was un­aware if the mo­tion was ap­proved. Singh said he was not wor­ried.

“There are two views on the par­ty - to con­tin­ue as we are or to seek uni­ty. I’ve done my part. I ex­pect ro­bust de­bate on the mat­ter,” he said.

UNC MP Bhoe Tewarie said, “In the end the par­ty will emerge well. In a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty peo­ple must be al­lowed dif­fer­ent views and have an av­enue to ex­press that. But the par­ty’s cul­ture must be strong enough to al­low for re­spect­ful en­gage­ment of is­sues. You don’t have to agree with a point of view to al­low a view to be ex­pressed. But the larg­er goals and ob­jec­tives must al­ways be kept in mind , you can­not di­vide a par­ty in the quest for uni­ty.”

“The ob­jec­tive must be to unite the par­ty, strength­en it, build a broad­er base of uni­ty and give the leader the where­with­al to make it more at­trac­tive both for elec­tion vic­to­ry and ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance there­after. You can­not weak­en a leader’s hand in the po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment that in­volves a com­plex process of nav­i­ga­tion and for­ma­tion of al­liances to con­sol­i­date a unit­ed par­ty which can at­tract larg­er num­bers be­yond UNC’s base,” he said.


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