Final results in the internal elections of the United National Congress (UNC) are not yet out but preliminary counts confirm that both Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Jack Warner scored landslide victories. Persad-Bissessar ran against UNC founder and political leader Basdeo Panday and Tabaquite MP Ramesh L. Maharaj.
The unofficial results show that she obtained around 13,000 votes while her closest opponent, Panday, had just over 1200. Maharaj got around 1,000 votes. In Warner's case he had more than 11,000 votes as opposed to the 2,000 for his challenger for chairmanship, Vasant Bharath.
Reports also confirm that that most of the candidates who ran with Panday were defeated. That means Warner and Persad-Bissessar will have control of the executive.
The new leadership is planning its first meeting on Wednesday at which MPs will indicate whether they will support the new leader for the post of opposition leader or whether they will let Panday remain in that post.
The general convention is for the leader of the party in opposition to be appointed leader. But in reality what the constitution says is that the person who commands the support of the majority of opposition members would be appointed opposition leader.
That happened in the 1976 Parliament when Panday was temprarily removed as opposition leader after Raffique Shah staged a party coup and won the support of the majority of opposition MPs and became leader. Panday later regained his position after convincing the majority that he was the better leader.
Just before the January 24 election 10 of the 15 UNC members and four its six Senators endorsed Panday, which means that if their support for him remains he would have a clear majority.
However since then at least two MPs have defected and there are reports that eight of the 15 MPs will support Persad-Bissessar.
UNC sources say the MPs who will back Persad-Bissessar for opposition leader are her former leadership rival Ramesh Maharaj, Jack Warner, Winston "Gypsy" Peters, Harry Partap, Nizam Baksh, Chandresh Sharma, Tim Gopeesingh and Persad-Bissessar herself.
In an interview with JYOTI Persad-Bissessar said she would respect the decision of the MPs but suggested that they should abide by the will of the majority who voted overwhelmingly to change the leadership.
Panday is still the Member of Parliament for Couva North and if he vacates the leadership position in Parliament he could end up on the backbench. That would be the first time in his political career he would have to be sidelined and relegated to the back.
Hamza Rafeeq is likely to be replaced as Chief Whip. That was the post that Maharaj held before he was removed by Panday for demanding changes and internal elections.
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