A three-member delegation from the opposition Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) is due to meet shortly with Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell.

Informed sources told GRENADA TODAY that the meeting is being held at the request of the Prime Minister to discuss certain aspects of the GULP's manifesto for the November 27, 2003 general election.

The delegation from the labour party will be headed by Political Leader Gloria Payne-Banfield and includes Deputy Political Leader Reynold Benjamin and executive member Clifford Robertson.

A noticeable absentee from the delegation is former Opposition Leader Michael Baptiste who is known to be vehemently opposed to any meeting between the GULP and the NNP Political leadership.

According to GULP insiders, Benjamin had initially indicated that he was not prepared to sit and meet with Prime Minister Mitchell to discuss political matters but had a change of heart on the weekend. Benjamin was once associated with the Grenadian leader as a member of the so-called "NNP-A Team" which took over the leader of the party from the ageing and ailing Herbert Blaize in 1989.

He broke from Mitchell a few years later when the current Prime Minister plotted his downfall as General Secretary of the party and replaced him with Joslyn Whiteman, the former Minister of Implementation.

A well-placed GULP insider said that the delegation intends to listen carefully to Prime Minister Mitchell in the discussions but will not make any commitments to him. "The members will have to come back to us in the executive and report on the meeting with the man (Dr. Mitchell). We have mandated them to hear what he has in mind and then we would respond appropriately", he remarked.

"We are not for sale. We don't know for sure which aspects of the manifesto he wants to discuss with us. The meeting is to give him a chance to put forward his views to us on our manifesto", he said.
In the 1999 general election, most of the labour party supporters broke ranks and voted for the NNP to help Prime Minister Mitchell sweep the polls and win all fifteen seats at stake.

Five years later, the GULP'ites switched allegiance and voted for the NDC in the November poll and helped the party to win seven of the seats to gain re-admittance to parliament. It is the second political group that Prime Minister Mitchell would be meeting with to discuss their manifesto following his party's showing in the just-ended general election which it narrowly won 8-7.

He met in December with the People's Labour Movement (PLM) of former Attorney-General Dr. Francis Alexis to discuss the party;s plans on lowering taxes at the port.

It is not clear whether the Grenadian leader would seek a meeting with the main opposition Party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to discuss aspects of its manifesto. However, Prime Minister Mitchell has been critical of the plan by the congress party to offer free school books to secondary school students in its manifesto, describing it as "a socialist thing" that cannot work.

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