Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 09, 2010 News
– As campaign against him mounts
Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir, who held on to the leadership of The United Force (TUF) despite serving as a Minister in the PPP/C government, says he will not run as the TUF presidential candidate in next year’s general election.
Nadir’s announcement comes as he faces a campaign to have him removed from his office as Minister. The main opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) seeks to have him removed by way of a Parliamentary motion, and a group of persons calling themselves Grassroots Alliance for Change has joined the bandwagon.
Nadir has run for the presidency under the TUF repeatedly, winning the smallest number of Parliamentary seats in the 2006 elections. Nadir sits as his party’s lone representative in Parliament, while serving as Minister in the PPP/C government.
He said that when he was 25 years old he had promised his wife and children he would retire at the age of 55, and that is what he intends to do.
Nadir said that the party has had a fair chance of asking the electorate to support him as the presidential candidate but he feels that it is time the party had new leadership.
He said this does not mean that he is stepping away from the party and politics altogether.
Asked about the future of the party when he is no longer leader, he said the TUF will survive just the way it has been surviving without its leader Peter D’Aguiar, just how the PNC has survived without Forbes Burnham and the ruling PPP has survived without Cheddi Jagan.
When the PPP/C won the 2001 general elections, President Bharrat Jagdeo asked Nadir to join his government as Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce. When new elections were called in 2006 and the PPP/C retained the seat of government, Nadir was asked to continue as Minister, but this time leading the Labour Ministry.
It is that portfolio that now has him in hot water with the opposition and the new group that has arisen. But Nadir feels that it is all part of a concerted effort to single out members of the government and carry out strong attacks against them and their families in an effort to weaken the government.
He said the Parliamentary motion by the PNCR, and the circulation of a leaflet by the Grassroots Alliance for Change, which has not named its members, are not isolated incidents.
He pointed to the recent discovery of a grenade at the home of his daughter Maria, who is married to Mahendra Sharma, the head of the Guyana Energy Agency.
The PNCR is charging that Nadir failed to protect and uphold the legally entitled rights of the workers of the Bauxite Company of Guyana, which is the locally owned subsidiary of Russian aluminum giant Rusal.
The party claims this is a gross and discriminatory dereliction of his responsibilities to the workers of Guyana.
Nadir said that the Rusal issue is a longstanding one and he continued to urge the company and the Union to meet on the thorny issues. At the moment, he acknowledged that the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union is the rightful representative of the workers.
However, he said the fact cannot be ignored that some workers have written the Trade Union Recognition and Certification Board asking that the said union be de-recognised as the union representing workers at Rusal’s Kwakwani operations.
Nadir said 40 percent of the workers can write and ask for de-recognition of the union, after which a poll has to be conducted.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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