Party did not do well at the polls

Contradicting statements made by UNC leader Basdeo Panday, St Joseph MP Gerald Yetming said the UNC did not do well in the polls. Panday had said that given the PNM’s use of state resources, the UNC did better than it thought. But Yetming earlier this week stated that the UNC definitely lost ground. He said that he had “personal experience” of working with a party (ONR), which in 1981 polled more votes than the Opposition ULF, but didn’t win a “damn” seat. “At the end of the day, it is the seats that count. We (UNC) lost in the number of seats that we held and therefore we did not do as well as we ought to have,” he told Newsday. The UNC, which won 57 seats out of 124 seats in the 1999 Local Government election, won 43 seats out of 126 in this year’s election. Furthermore, the party lost control of the  Sangre Grande and Siparia Corpora-tions to the PNM, and tied with the PNM in Rio Claro/Mayaro — a corporation which it formerly controlled, having won the majority of seats in 1999. 

Yetming said that he was not “playing with numbers.” He stated, however, that the “numbers game” was important if only to show that the UNC, which received 146,000 votes in the Local Government election, did still have good ground support. “That is good...and we ought to be comforted by that. But it certainly does not translate into having done well, because at the end of the day, (the number of) seats is what counts,” the former Finance Minister stated. Yetming, who stated that the party needed to rebuild itself to get back its broad-based support, has been holding fast to his position that the party needs a new leader and new leadership. “Once there is this uncertainty about the leader, the party will not make serious progress,” he stated. He stressed that it was the leader who had expressed a desire to go. “We cannot continue in a situation where the leader is saying ‘I am ready to go’ and nothing happens,” he added.

Since his bold statements were published in Newsday, several of his colleagues have condemned his frankness, while others have been noncommittal. Yesterday, Yetming said no one in the UNC could silence him on issues affecting the party. “I don’t require the party’s approval, or Mr Mark’s approval to speak my mind on issues that affect the country, and affect the party. I have not, as far as I am concerned, committed any act of indiscipline, and I don’t think that I require licence from anyone to speak out on issues affecting the party and the country,” he said.