STATEMENT BY WINSTON DOOKERAN

I remind all who may be losing patience with my patience that there are situations in which, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Silence is Action.”

It should, however, come as no surprise that my time and my tolerance for the internal debacle, and the unending public spectacle are nearing an end.

The actions of the group now exercising power over the affairs of the Party continue to bring the Party into international disrepute, public ridicule and increasing disfavour with the electorate.

Democratic principles routinely observed by any association of people of shared interests and aspirations have been violated and the intentions of the Party’s Constitution have been discarded.

The Executive group has become a runaway horse, taking the UNC on what can turn out to be an irreversible path to terminal disaster.

This week, they have contrived to maintain a dysfunctional dual-leadership aberration in the UNC.

With talk about wanting to work with me, while publicly attacking me during the course of this week, we have seen their deceit, their lack of integrity, and their contempt for the intelligence of the members and supporters of the Party.

There can be only one predictable outcome to these excesses, and that is to deliver another long-term stranglehold on government to the ruling Party.

I remain steadfast in my commitment to the interests and to the betterment of the lives of the people whom the United National Congress is meant to serve.

This is why I have tolerated the calculated indignities that have been publicly directed at me. However, time is definitely running out on my patience.

Starting this weekend, I shall go directly to the membership of the UNC; in whom the power to save the party, as well as the country resides. I shall be outlining directly to the membership, my perspectives on the prospects of the UNC as it is now functioning.

I shall also share with the membership of the Party, my options for mounting a viable mission for rescuing Trinidad and Tobago from politics that remain stuck in another time.

Our essential mission is to rescue our country from a government whose principal accomplishments, to date, have been nurturing crime, in a land of affluence in which depressing levels of poverty — and an unacceptable high Misery Index — continue to exist.

Many from the UNC — and from beyond — will be going forward with me in this mission.

There is no question that the majority of members and supporters of the United National Congress are fully conscious of these realities.

All of these people recognise that the chances of returning to government under the cabal now controlling the party have fallen to zero.

When I speak, I will continue to speak with deliberation.

When I act, as I shall, it will — as it always has been with me, very deliberately, very responsibly; and with reason and purpose.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen of the media.