At­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la says it’s time to move on from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ 2020 lead­er­ship elec­tion de­feat, since there must now be a meet­ing of the minds to find com­mon ground to take T&T for­ward out of its many dif­fi­cul­ties.

He in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day af­ter his at­ten­dance at last Fri­day’s UNC’s Fam­i­ly Day sparked queries, as Lal­la was among Vas­ant Bharath’s team in his (un­suc­cess­ful) 2020 lead­er­ship bat­tle with leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

UNC’s De­vant Ma­haraj, who’d sup­port­ed Bharath, has slammed the Fam­i­ly Day at­ten­dance by Lal­la and oth­ers, whom he said had been crit­i­cal of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship.

De­fend­ing his at­ten­dance, Lal­la said he’d nev­er stopped li­ais­ing with the UNC.

“At the end of the day, I’m a mem­ber—I nev­er ceased be­ing a mem­ber,” he said.
“Yes I op­posed Per­sad-Bisses­sar in pre­vi­ous elec­tions (with Bharath) but the elec­tions are over. It’s now time to move on. I have noth­ing per­son­al against any per­son in any pre­vi­ous elec­tion. There­fore, if I’m in­vit­ed to a func­tion and I have time, I’ll at­tend re­gard­less of what any­one thinks of me, be­cause at the end of the day, the coun­try comes first.”

He added, “There are so many dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing T&T present­ly—from crime and the econ­o­my to youths leav­ing in droves as they don’t see hope for the fu­ture. It’s im­por­tant where pos­si­ble for there to be a meet­ing of the minds to find a way to take T&T for­ward.

“To achieve that and find com­mon ground to do so, I’m not go­ing to close my mind on this to any­one in my par­ty. I al­ways be­lieve there are good peo­ple in both par­ties and if there are peo­ple with good ideas in the PNM—of which I’m sure there are —we have to lis­ten to them as well, be­cause at the end of the day we all have to live here to­geth­er and have to find a way to take T&T for­ward to­geth­er.”

On vit­ri­olic per­son­al at­tacks on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape, Lal­la said he didn’t see how any of those helped with T&T’s is­sues. He re­fused com­ment on UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts’ al­leged com­ments on the Prime Min­is­ter’s wife but said it’s im­por­tant to raise the lev­el of dis­cus­sions in T&T .

On crime, Lal­la added, “It ap­pears there are hired hit­men roam­ing T&T. That’s a se­ri­ous is­sue for which the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er must tell T&T what his plans are.”

Lal­la said he wasn’t fil­ing nom­i­na­tion for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions but was pre­pared to as­sist the UNC in any way pos­si­ble. As for gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­na­tion, he said, “Why talk about that - that’s so far away.”

An­oth­er at­tendee, ex-min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said, “Po­lit­i­cal par­ties, like all or­gan­i­sa­tions, bond in dif­fer­ent ways. The Debe event was very pos­i­tive and the at­mos­phere was wel­com­ing.”

At­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh said he was in­vit­ed.

“I at­tend­ed, I had a good time. Who­ev­er didn’t at­tend missed out on some good cur­ry duck and chow.”

Among the hand­ful of UNC Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who were ab­sent, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said he’d planned to at­tend but his el­der­ly fa­ther was ill in hos­pi­tal.

”He is 75—I had to be with him,” he said.

Cu­mu­to Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir said his sis­ter had a stroke.

“She is like a sec­ond moth­er to us and it was a sec­ond stroke so we’re watch­ing the sit­u­a­tion care­ful­ly. She’s walk­ing with a cane,” Rag­bir said.