Panday charges — Ramesh, Manning out to destroy sugar union

OPPOSITION leader Basdeo Panday has charged that an “unholy alliance” between the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) government and Team Unity (TU) leader Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, was responsible for an attack on one of the nation’s oldest trade union organisations.

However, Panday added, the alliance would not adversely affect support for the UNC. Panday made the comments while addressing the media on Monday evening, after a UNC executive meeting was held at the party’s headquarters at Rienzi Complex in Couva. “Manning and the PNM have set out to destroy the 66-year old union and now we see Mr Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj trying to put the finishing touches to this destruction,” Panday said. “They believe that by destroying the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union, they will in some way, hurt the UNC. Of course they are wrong,” Panday added. To prove his point, Panday told the media that during the recently held Local Government election poll (which the ruling PNM won), the Opposition party received 147,340 votes against the ruling party’s 142,300 votes.  He also revealed that his party had scheduled a “retreat” for MP’s and top party officials on September 7, to “examine” the results of the Local Government poll.

Panday thundered that sugar workers and cane farmers would not “ever forget” the role that Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, Trevor Sudama and Ralph Maraj played in putting the PNM in power. And asked to comment on the findings of the NACTA poll which predicted that “former sugar workers and canefarmers would bury Panday and the Opposition party’s present leadership,” the Opposition leader reiterated his “suspicions” about both the poll, and also the person responsible for it. “I believe that that poll is fraudulent, and I am beginning to suspect the author of that poll as being in the pay of a certain person, whose name I will not call,” Panday said. Pressed to call the name of the “certain person,” Panday still refused to divulge the information, opting instead to give a wry smile and the comment, “you know who I am speaking about.” Responding to news reports of an impending increase in NIS payments, Panday said Prime Minister Manning has an “infinite propensity to raise taxes.” “He is raising taxes and imposing burdens on the people to supplement the wild spending he has embarked on,” Panday charged, adding the country was becoming aware of what they had done, by electing the Manning administration into the corridors of power. Also attending the press conference was UNC Chairman Wade Mark, who said the UNC’s party congress had been scheduled for October 12, while the National Assembly of Delegates, was scheduled for November 30. He also predicted that the PNM’s plan for a “restructured” sugar industry would include an importation of sugar by “PNM agents” who had already “been set up to import sugar.”