Renu­ka Singh

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress stal­warts Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Dr Tim Gopeesingh are de­fend­ing par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar against so­cial me­dia calls that she steps down in the wake of her lat­est de­feat in the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Gopeesingh ques­tioned who ex­act­ly was call­ing for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to leave the par­ty.

“There is one leader in the par­ty and that is Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar,” Gopeesingh said.

Gopeesingh said he was “very proud” of the cam­paign and the en­er­gy that Per­sad-Bisses­sar gave to the cam­paign trail in the past few weeks.

“She ran a mag­nif­i­cent cam­paign, she worked hard,” he said.

Gopeesingh said un­like Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley fo­cused on race and eth­nic­i­ty dur­ing his cam­paign.

“I am very dis­ap­point­ed that he ran that type of cam­paign in the last four or five days where he fo­cused on some ba­nana ad­ver­tise­ment of his own cre­ation,” Gopeesingh said.

He was re­fer­ring to an ad­ver­tise­ment at­trib­uted to the UNC days be­fore the elec­tion which, in part, showed an im­pov­er­ished woman beg­ging a cou­ple for food and be­ing giv­en a hand of yel­low ba­nanas.

The ad re­ceived harsh crit­i­cism from Row­ley for pro­mot­ing a racist agen­da and “hu­mil­i­at­ing” Afro-Trinida­di­ans.

Gopeesingh al­so ques­tioned the low turnout of vot­ers.

“Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion we have at hand, we have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 380,000 vot­ers. That’s a low­er turnout than we have for a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

“We need to ask why, when we are ac­cus­tomed to an al­most 750,000 or 800,000 vot­ers,” Gopeesingh said.

He al­so said the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) need­ed to re­vise the fun­da­men­tals of the elec­tion process.

“How can you have al­most the whole of Trinidad in yel­low but the East/West cor­ri­dor alone earns the PNM a vic­to­ry?” he asked.

Ram­bachan al­so de­nied there was any lead­er­ship cri­sis in the par­ty.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al cam­paign on Au­gust 3, Ram­bachan had en­dorsed Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal as the par­ty’s next leader.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, he said there is cur­rent­ly no lead­er­ship cri­sis or calls for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to step down with­in the par­ty.

“The UNC has im­proved its stand­ing not on­ly by win­ning one more seat but by nar­row­ing the mar­gins the PNM had in seats like St Joseph, La Hor­quet­ta and San Fer­nan­do West,” Ram­bachan said.

He al­so de­fend­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s suc­ces­sion plan­ning meth­ods, say­ing she had al­ready brought in new and young faces.

“Mrs Bisses­sar has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that she is the process of ush­er­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers and in this re­gard, she made brave changes to the line-up of can­di­dates,” he said.

“I do be­lieve that she will un­der­take her own as­sess­ment of what she wants to do and where she wants to be over the next few years.

This elec­tion was part of a new nor­mal.”

Ram­bachan said that the UNC lost the elec­tion “not be­cause of its pol­i­cy po­si­tions but more be­cause of pro­pa­gan­da”.

“The coun­try still needs to know, for ex­am­ple, how we are go­ing to pay the 120 bil­lion in debts cre­at­ed by the PNM. The peo­ple want jobs and food on their ta­bles. The gov­ern­ment can­not keep draw­ing down on the HSF,” he said.

“It will be de­plet­ed. The crit­i­cism re­mains that the PNM does not have a plan. The peo­ple vot­ed as their free­dom al­lowed them but are they free?”

Ram­bachan said it was wor­ry­ing that both sides had low­er win­ning votes in safe seats, as it showed peo­ple were get­ting dis­en­chant­ed with the of­fer­ings. He sug­gest­ed can­di­dates Sean Sobers, Ahloy Hunt and Jear­lean John be made sen­a­tors.

But Hunt yes­ter­day had no com­ment on the planned St Joseph re­count.

He said while he re­mained a life­time UNC mem­ber, he was out of rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics and is de­vot­ing time to his daugh­ter.