Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne says she is pre­pared to deal with any fall­out from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress af­ter mak­ing calls for the par­ty to hold in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Haynes-Al­leyne, who spoke dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, said her on­ly con­cern was for the UNC’s growth and de­vel­op­ment.

“There are con­se­quences for your ac­tions, yes, but there are al­so con­se­quences for in­ac­tion. You can’t es­cape con­se­quences sit­ting silent­ly by and watch­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion that you love not ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare it­self to be the best ver­sion of it­self ahead of a big test in 2025. The in­ac­tion there will al­so bear con­se­quences. I am less pre­pared to deal with the con­se­quences of si­lence, and I am very pre­pared to deal with the con­se­quences of speak­ing out be­cause I think it’s the right thing to do.”

This comes af­ter UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised Haynes-Al­leyne and four oth­er par­ty mem­bers for be­ing ab­sent from last Fri­day’s par­lia­men­tary sit­ting, where there was a de­bate on the im­passe be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

How­ev­er, the Tabaquite MP said a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ef­fort was be­ing put in­to mak­ing a sim­ple mat­ter com­pli­cat­ed.

“This is­sue of tak­ing this and mak­ing an is­sue of at­ten­dance records is re­al­ly try­ing to di­min­ish and dis­tract from what the main is­sues are, and the main is­sues re­main whether or not we are putting our or­gan­i­sa­tion in place to win a gen­er­al elec­tion in 2025,” she said.

“And those things are ques­tions that can be sim­ply an­swered; the is­sue can be prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed once the elec­tion date is called, and all that can be done in a man­ner that is re­spect­ful and a man­ner that fo­cus­es on pol­i­cy, on the di­rec­tion of the par­ty, and moves away from this lev­el of pet­ty pro­pa­gan­da.”
She be­lieves the chal­lenge the UNC is fac­ing is find­ing ways to strength­en the in­ter­nal struc­ture of the par­ty in prepa­ra­tion for a gen­er­al elec­tion. She re­it­er­at­ed calls for in­ter­nal elec­tions, say­ing this will pro­vide an av­enue for mem­bers to voice con­cerns.
She said they must move away from sur­viv­ing to thriv­ing and cre­at­ing an ex­pan­sive, force­ful move­ment.