PM urges UNC members to stand by party ‘family’ in times of adversity

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is urg­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­bers to re­main loy­al to one an­oth­er, warn­ing them to be pre­pared to con­front “wicked­ness” and de­fend their po­lit­i­cal fam­i­ly in times of ad­ver­si­ty.

In a sep­a­rate Di­vali mes­sage to UNC mem­bers yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­voked the Hin­du con­cept of Dhar­ma Yud­dha, or right­eous war, say­ing that stand­ing against in­jus­tice and pro­tect­ing loved ones re­quire courage and con­vic­tion.

In a Face­book post, she re­flect­ed on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Lord Ra­ma and his three broth­ers, Lak­sh­mana, Bhara­ta and Sha­trugh­na, say­ing their bonds rep­re­sent­ed “love, loy­al­ty, de­vo­tion and sac­ri­fice”.

She said their broth­er­hood showed that “true fam­i­ly face hard­ships to­geth­er rather than sep­a­rat­ed, sup­port­ing each oth­er and not com­mit­ting be­tray­al and sub­terfuge for per­son­al gain”.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told mem­bers there was “a fire in­side each of you” that should be used peace­ful­ly and ho­n­ourably to light their path through life.

How­ev­er, she warned that when dark­ness en­gulfed their fam­i­ly, they should be pre­pared to use that same fire “to burn every­thing be­fore you to ash­es in de­fense of your fam­i­ly”.

Ref­er­enc­ing Dhar­ma Yud­dha, the Prime Min­is­ter said de­fend­ing jus­tice, pro­tect­ing loved ones and stand­ing up for what is right were re­spon­si­bil­i­ties re­quir­ing “courage, dis­ci­pline and con­vic­tion”.

She al­so drew par­al­lels with what she de­scribed as the treat­ment of UNC mem­bers dur­ing the par­ty’s 10 years in Op­po­si­tion.

“When we wit­ness the in­no­cent among us be­ing op­pressed, the vul­ner­a­ble be­ing bul­lied or oth­ers be­ing treat­ed un­just­ly, as what we re­mem­ber hap­pened to UNC mem­bers dur­ing our ten years in op­po­si­tion, we must be brave and con­front that wicked­ness head-on,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed the im­por­tance of po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty, telling sup­port­ers nev­er to turn their backs on the UNC fam­i­ly when mem­bers need­ed help.

“You must nev­er sur­ren­der the prin­ci­ple of loy­al­ty sim­ply be­cause the road be­comes dif­fi­cult,” she said.

She added that dark­ness could not be over­come by sur­ren­der­ing to it or ig­nor­ing it, but by hav­ing the courage and will­ing­ness to stand up for loved ones.

The Prime Min­is­ter called for those val­ues to be passed on to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, say­ing the “right­eous bond of love and loy­al­ty” must be in­stilled in UNC mem­bers and taught to their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren.

She de­scribed lead­ing the UNC as “the great­est priv­i­lege of my life”, adding that it was an ho­n­our to call the mem­ber­ship her fam­i­ly.

The mes­sage is the lat­est in­stance in which Per­sad-Bisses­sar has is­sued a sep­a­rate hol­i­day greet­ing specif­i­cal­ly to UNC sup­port­ers along­side of­fi­cial na­tion­al mes­sages.

In Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber, she sparked po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy by is­su­ing sep­a­rate hol­i­day mes­sages to UNC mem­bers in ad­di­tion to her ad­dress­es to the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.