Yetming dividing UNC

In response to a direct question on whether he would be an aspirant to the position of political leader, St Joseph MP Gerald Yetming said yesterday that he was willing to play any part in the rebuilding of the UNC. He was not prepared to explain or clarify that statement. He agreed with statements attributed to his leader, Basdeo Panday that “predators” may want to take the UNC leadership, if there is a political vacuum. Yetming has already gone on record as saying that Ramesh Lawrence-Maharaj is not an alternative. But Yetming stated that this was where the Executive came in. “That is what I meant when I said that the party had to strategise — in order to prevent predators and in order to ensure that viable and successful candidates for leadership were mounted. It is understood that many of the MPs in the party who have been rushing to Panday’s defence, are in fact of the same view as Yetming on the leadership question. Meanwhile veteran politician John Humphrey said yesterday that the problem within the UNC was not the leader, but the leadership. “Our politics focuses too much on the leader...And the party (UNC) has remained for too long as a one man show. If Mr Panday would make room for more deputies...But that is not happening,” Humphrey stated. He recalled that he recommended two years ago that the party have three deputies and that at least one be a woman and one be a non-Indian “to reflect the reality of the society”.  But I was ignored,” he stated..

Stressing that the problem was not the leader, but the way in which the leader dominated the politics of the party (and in the case of the Prime Minister, the politics of the country and government), Humphrey said when a party loses an election, you have a lot of people to blame. Though, he conceded, the leader does have a role in this. But, he stressed that UNC needed new leadership (Executive) and it needed constitution reform. Saying that the present constitution of the UNC was “Ramesh’s” (Lawrence Maharaj) constitution, Hum-phrey said the PNM had a better constitution. Asked whether the party was in trouble, Humphrey said any party that is in the minority is in trouble. But was there a leadership problem?  Humphrey res-ponded with a question: “Why do you depend on one man?” He  said the UNC needed an effective Executive. However he disagreed with Yetming’s approach, saying that the St Joseph MP should put his hat in the ring if he is interested in serving as political leader.  “Yetming had his views and those are the views of his circle of friends but this is not held by the majority. If Mr Yetming thinks Mr Panday should go, why doesn’t he offer himself as leader?” Humphrey stated, adding: “(Kelvin) Ramnath did it. Though I don’t think Mr Panday was prepared to tolerate a challenge then. He might be more open to it now...(Let Yetming present himself) And let the members decide and the membership, which has one-man, one-vote will decide,” Humphrey stated.

But, he stressed, until Panday steps down or is voted out, he was the leader. And therefore, Yetming was “in error.. because all he is doing (now) is dividing the party. It means Mr Panday can’t rely on him in the Parliament,” Humphrey stated. Humphrey stated however that he had a sense of futility about the politics of Trinidad and Tobago. “The country is in trouble. If Mr Manning was truly interested in national unity and if Mr Panday was truly interested in national unity, they would have gotten together. But each one of them is fighting for dominance because of the power-centricity of this political system. There is no room for cooperation,” he said. Saying that he was seeing no hope from either the PNM or the UNC camp, Humphrey stated: “What we were able to put together in 1986 — the ONR, ULF, Tapia and DAC — the country now yearns for...And I don’t see any way of achieving it again,” he said. Humphrey lamented that  nobody was dealing with the fundamental problems of the country. The PNM was not solving the problem of poverty and of mobilising the economic resources to create jobs, he said. “And youth can’t wait on Manning’s promises,” he said. He added that unless “they” (the politicians)  “found a formula” for uniting the people and dealing with the fundamental problem of poverty, “1970 would revisit us, but this time it will be very violent”.

Former Speaker and former ULF stalwart, Nizam Mohammed said he was not surprised by what was happening in the UNC. He said in the midst of the series of serious disappointments that the UNC has been experiencing, it was expected that there would be these convulsions until it eventually finds some common ground to see whether it can effectively challenge the present government. He did not want to venture an opinion on whether the party needed to find  a new leader. “I am so far removed...I can’t say whether he (Panday) should or shouldn’t (go), whether he is the problem  or not,” Mohammed said. Asked whether the UNC had been performing creditably as an Opposition, Mohammed said the disappointments the party suffered were being reflected in the way that the party was approaching the whole exercise of Opposition. “I felt that much more can be done (by the Opposition),” he said. Asked whether Panday would recover from this latest challenge, Mohammed laughed and said: “He has rallied so many out in the past, I won’t be surprised if he does.”