Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not sim­ply say ‘no thank you,’ the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader wrote a sev­en-page let­ter to care­ful­ly and force­ful­ly ar­tic­u­late to Rush­ton Paray why she did not join him for the launch of his in­ter­nal elec­tion slate yes­ter­day evening. 

It’s a cor­re­spon­dence that po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed is de­scrib­ing as a show of force from a “sea­soned politi­cian.” 

Hours be­fore Paray re­vealed his Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate for the June 15 in­ter­nal elec­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar cir­cu­lat­ed a let­ter to the me­dia, which was her re­sponse to his pri­vate in­vi­ta­tion for her to join them at Sig­na­ture Hall for the event. 

In the let­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the in­vite as “a cu­ri­ous de­vi­a­tion from gen­er­al eti­quette,” as the in­vite came less than 24 hours from the event. 

List­ing her is­sues with the in­vi­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly a line by Paray that said, “I com­mit to work­ing close­ly with you to strength­en our par­ty,” the UNC leader said she was sur­prised he want­ed to work with her con­sid­er­ing the time spent in the me­dia and pub­lic crit­i­cis­ing her lead­er­ship style. 

Per­sad-Bisses­sar then used four pages of her let­ter to at­tach on­line links to news ar­ti­cles with state­ments by Paray, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, and Rod­ney Charles con­demn­ing her per­for­mance as a po­lit­i­cal leader. 

She added, “Fur­ther, I note the con­spic­u­ous ab­sence of you and your co­horts at the Par­lia­men­tary Sit­ting of April 26, 2024, where you con­se­quent­ly failed to sup­port the UNC Par­lia­men­tary Team in de­feat­ing the PNM Gov­ern­ment in a his­toric vote re., the Mo­tion to ex­tend the time for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2023 Re­port.” 

The UNC leader al­so took is­sue with Paray call­ing her “a val­ued mem­ber of our par­ty.” 

She re­spond­ed to Paray, say­ing she was much more than that. 

“I re­mind you of the fact that, be­yond be­ing a ‘val­ued mem­ber of the par­ty,’ I am the du­ly elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC, a post I have held and con­sec­u­tive­ly re­tained for the past 14 years via en­dorse­ment of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of our par­ty’s mem­ber­ship in all re­spec­tive in­ter­nal elec­tions,” she posit­ed. 

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­vid­ed fur­ther crit­i­cism of Paray’s at­tempt to present his slate’s plans and pro­pos­als for the UNC to her at the event. 

Scathing­ly, she wrote, “I note that, de­spite hav­ing been a UNC MP for the past nine years, you have con­sis­tent­ly failed to of­fer any­thing con­struc­tive to the de­vel­op­ment of the UNC through­out your tenure. De­spite your pro­fes­sions, your ac­tions and pub­lic ut­ter­ances in the past three months can be valid­ly viewed as noth­ing short of a de­vi­ous, de­struc­tive at­tempt to desta­bilise the UNC.” 

Guardian Me­dia asked Paray yes­ter­day: What was the ra­tio­nale for invit­ing her? 

“At the end of the day, she is not con­test­ing the elec­tion, and I sent out a num­ber of in­vites to the peo­ple in the par­ty, and she’s a mem­ber of the par­ty as well be­cause I want to re­serve seats,” Paray ex­plained, adding that the in­vi­ta­tion was meant to be a per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence. 

“How could I in­vite the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary and oth­er peo­ple and not the po­lit­i­cal leader?” he asked. 

When asked to com­ment on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to re­spond pub­licly to his in­vi­ta­tion, Paray said, “I found that was a lit­tle odd, but noth­ing sur­pris­es me in pol­i­tics any­more; I am learn­ing day by day.” 

At the time of the in­ter­view yes­ter­day evening, Paray said he did not get a chance to read her let­ter as he was busy prepar­ing for the launch of his slate. 

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Mo­hammed said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse was to show her naysay­ers that she is not a weak leader but a strate­gic and sea­soned politi­cian. 

Mo­hammed said the dam­age was al­ready done be­tween Paray and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and the Ma­yaro MP will have an up­hill task con­vinc­ing the UNC leader that they can work to­geth­er. 

“She is with­in her right to re­spond and tell them, all the time you thought I was not good enough to lead the par­ty, and then sud­den­ly you want to in­vite me to your launch and call me your po­lit­i­cal leader? She is be­ing quite tact­ful at this stage in her re­sponse, and it is pol­i­tics and cam­paign­ing on pa­per. So, it is for them to ex­plain to her why the sud­den change of heart,” Mo­hammed ex­plained. 

Mo­hammed said it is up to her po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents to now “beat her at her game.”