‘TIME TO MOVE ON’

Dookeran, who has decided not to attend today’s meeting of the UNC executive at Rienzi Complex, said the time has come to move forward.

Sources within the Dookeran camp told Newsday that the call to UNC executive members to meet with him, followed a telephone call he made to the office of Opposition Leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, yesterday afternoon concerning unity talks. But Dookeran was reportedly told that the Opposition Leader was not in a position to offer opinions or make decisions without the UNC executive.

UNC founder, Basdeo Panday, recently dismissed the talks between Dookeran and Persad-Bissessar as only “bilateral”, saying that those matters should be discussed before the party and its institutions.

The call to the Opposition Leader’s office yesterday appeared to signal the end of unity talks between Dookeran and Persad-Bissessar, which were initiated by Dookeran himself in a bid to agree on a common agenda for the party to move ahead.

He has now taken his own action. Dookeran said yesterday, “I have been trying to have a follow-up meeting with the Leader of the Opposition where a clear and common agenda for the party to move ahead would have been established.

“This has not happened, so I will be calling the current members of the executive, and the members who were removed from the current executive, to a meeting at my office. The time has come to move forward.”

Persad-Bissessar did not return Newsday’s call to her yesterday concerning the matter.

Former members of the UNC executive are Chaguanas MP Manohar Ramsaran, former UNC Senators Gary Griffith and Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, and Carol Cuffie-Dowlat.

A source in the Dookeran camp stressed, however, that Dookeran is not calling a UNC executive meeting.“He has asked members of the executive to meet with him and talk with him about ways to bring about cohesion for a single party. There’s a difference.”

Former UNC Government Minister, John Humphrey, has come out of political retirement to lend his support to Dookeran.

Humphrey, a former UNC deputy leader and acting prime minister, was a guest speaker at a cottage meeting held by Dookeran in Ghandi Village, Debe, on Monday. He told a crowd which reportedly numbered 150 persons, “Dookeran remains the most qualified person to lead us all into government, and the best choice for our next Prime Minister.”

Dookeran, addressing the crowd, called on MP for the area, Dr Roodal Moonilal, and all his executive and parliamentary colleagues, to join him in an effort to solidify the Opposition for a single party to challenge the PNM.

On his planned Congress of the People rally at Aranjuez Savannah on September 10, Dookeran said, “Our meeting will be an important milestone for all of us in the UNC and the nation.”