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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Mayaro braces for new representation

by

KEVON FELMINE
26 days ago
20250423

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

 

With the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion just days away, the usu­al­ly serene con­stituen­cy of Ma­yaro braces it­self for a new be­gin­ning. Re­gard­less of the out­come, Ma­yaro will have a new par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has re­placed long-stand­ing MP Rush­ton Paray with Nicholas Mor­ris, spark­ing de­bate and some di­vi­sion with­in its east­ern strong­hold.

Mean­while, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), hav­ing once se­cured the then-Or­toire/Ma­yaro seat in the 2002 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, aims to re­gain it with can­di­date Beat­rice Bridglal.

How­ev­er, it will be a dif­fi­cult task. The UNC has held the seat from 2007 to now. In 2020, Paray won with 10,593 votes, beat­ing PNM’s Bun­ny Ma­habirs­ingh, who gar­nered 7,229 votes. This was a slight de­cline over the 2015 re­sults when Paray se­cured 11,730 votes against the PNM can­di­date Clarence Ramb­harat’s 8,836.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Ma­yaro Mar­ket, ven­dors voiced frus­tra­tions over the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (MR­CRC) re­fus­ing to open the toi­let fa­cil­i­ties. Ven­dors were forced to re­lieve them­selves else­where af­ter spend­ing hours sell­ing goods, as the door re­mained locked. Al­though this was a lo­cal gov­ern­ment is­sue, ven­dors felt their MP should act on their be­half in all mat­ters.

Out­side the mar­ket, veg­etable farmer and ven­dor Rad­i­ca Roopi, 57, from Ker­na­ham Vil­lage, ex­pressed how dif­fi­cult life had be­come in her com­mu­ni­ty.

As an agri­cul­tur­al vil­lage, she said they strug­gle for ad­e­quate wa­ter in their tap. She added that pes­ti­cide prices are too high, dis­eases af­fect crops, and peo­ple rarely buy pro­duce at the mar­ket.

Ker­na­ham, a flood-prone area near the sea­side, has been dev­as­tat­ed by past flood­ing. Roopi re­called that de­spite her ef­forts to back­fill around her home, the vil­lage still lacked prop­er in­fra­struc­ture.

“We do not have any good roads. The piece of road we live on, we have to buy grav­el to fill it in,” Roopi said, adding that patch­work re­pairs were in­ef­fec­tive.

She hopes the in­com­ing MP will work to­wards im­prov­ing the con­stituen­cy’s in­fra­struc­ture.

Navet res­i­dent Lin­berg Ramdeen, 35, said the com­mu­ni­ty’s recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties need ur­gent at­ten­tion. He point­ed to the Jairam Trace Recre­ation Ground, which could ben­e­fit from flood­lights to bet­ter serve the youth. He al­so not­ed that the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies would like­ly de­ter­mine the next gov­ern­ment. Giv­en the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic state and the col­lapse of the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela, he stressed that lead­er­ship ca­pa­ble of rene­go­ti­at­ing such deals was cru­cial.

Over in Stone­bright Vil­lage, Richard McGuirk and oth­ers shared con­cerns over a lack of de­vel­op­ment in re­cent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pared to the UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion from 2010-2015. Is­sues like the pub­lic spat be­tween for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wan­tee Ram­dass weighed heav­i­ly on his vot­ing de­ci­sion.

McGuirk stressed that the vil­lage need­ed road re­pairs, job cre­ation, and youth de­vel­op­ment.

“The youths are form­ing lit­tle gangs. They are not too bad yet, but in time, they could lead to de­struc­tion,” McGuirk said.

He al­so high­light­ed the need for bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port fish­ing and agri­cul­ture.

In Rio Claro, 62-year-old con­struc­tion work­er Kate Baal lament­ed the lack of steady work.

“I hard­ly have any work. When I get a lit­tle day’s work, that’s all I get,” Baal said.

He claimed a cer­tain drilling project in his com­mu­ni­ty on­ly pro­vid­ed work for a se­lect few. When asked if he had reached out to his rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Baal said, “They don’t have time for any­body.”

Along the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road, Univ­er Noel com­plained that de­spite con­stant pleas for road re­pairs at Dades Trace Ex­ten­sion, res­i­dents’ re­quests had gone un­heard.

“Not even just there. There are oth­er places in Rio Claro where the road is so bad that taxis won’t even go. And when they do, they charge ex­tra be­cause the road ru­ins their tyres,” Noel said.

The dis­en­chant­ment left some res­i­dents un­will­ing to vote, not­ing their con­cerns were ig­nored.

Noel, how­ev­er, said she would still vote on April 28, as she hopes for im­prove­ments.

“The next MP should be fair to the peo­ple and lis­ten to their voic­es,” she said.

As­sess­ing for­mer MP

Rad­i­ca Roopi, who ad­mit­ted she nev­er re­al­ly fol­lowed the pol­i­tics and nev­er sought Paray’s help, said she was amazed at how her son, a labour­er, was rais­ing three young chil­dren.

“Peo­ple need a bet­ter coun­try; the poor peo­ple are catch­ing hell,” she said.

Al­though Roopi couldn’t as­sess Paray’s per­for­mance di­rect­ly, she is de­ter­mined to vote, hop­ing for a bet­ter fu­ture.

Ramdeen, mean­while, felt Paray rep­re­sent­ed the con­stituen­cy well dur­ing his tenure.

“Con­sid­er­ing the in­di­vid­ual, a lot of re­spect for him. I don’t know too much about Mor­ris yet, but I know he’s a very good per­son as well,” Ramdeen said.

He be­lieves Mor­ris will come out on top de­spite the in­ter­nal par­ty con­flict.

“I was up­set by his (Paray) re­place­ment, but I don’t be­lieve it will cost the UNC a par­lia­men­tary seat.”

McGuirk, while prais­ing Paray’s work, was deeply dis­ap­point­ed by the UNC’s re­jec­tion of Paray.

“Rush­ton Paray is the man for up here. How­ev­er, Kam­la did not se­lect him. But he is a very good man. We all know him up here, and we sup­port him 100 per cent,” McGuirk said.

Baal was less im­pressed with Paray’s per­for­mance, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Rio Claro.

“Boy, Rush­ton Paray, I nev­er saw him do any­thing for Rio Claro,” he said.

De­spite his dis­il­lu­sion­ment, Baal was will­ing to give the new can­di­date a chance, ac­cept­ing Mor­ris’ promise of help.

Noel, though ac­knowl­edg­ing Paray’s past con­tri­bu­tions, was ea­ger for change.

  

New face of the UNC

Mor­ris, though young, is no new­com­er to the UNC. He served as the Na­tion­al Youth Arm chair­man from 2011 to 2015 and is cur­rent­ly the In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer. He has al­so worked as an op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tary re­searcher on en­er­gy af­fairs and par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure for nine years.

In an in­ter­view at the Ma­yaro Mar­ket, Mor­ris ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the in­ter­nal par­ty strife had not af­fect­ed the par­ty’s sup­port­ers in Ma­yaro.

“We go for­ward as one strong Ma­yaro and UNC fam­i­ly,” he said.

He de­scribed Paray’s tenure as bril­liant but stressed the fo­cus now was on mov­ing the con­stituen­cy for­ward.

Mor­ris out­lined a vi­sion for Ma­yaro, em­pha­sis­ing the need to re­duce food prices, make fu­el af­ford­able, re­move Val­ue-Added Tax and prop­er­ty tax, and im­prove health­care and com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty. He al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of the en­er­gy sec­tor to Ma­yaro’s econ­o­my.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mor­ris spoke of trans­form­ing Ma­yaro in­to a tourism hub, stat­ing that its beau­ty could make it the “Mi­a­mi of the Caribbean.”

For Mor­ris, suc­cess af­ter five years would see Ma­yaro thriv­ing with a boom­ing en­er­gy sec­tor, a strong agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try, im­proved in­fra­struc­ture and a Ma­yaro Tech­nol­o­gy In­sti­tute.

 

PNM eyes op­por­tu­ni­ty

Bridglal, an in­sur­ance agent for 27 years and a life­time mem­ber of The Mil­lion Dol­lar Round­table, ac­knowl­edged the UNC’s in­ter­nal squab­ble had pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the PNM to se­cure a win. De­spite this, she said she was pre­pared for the chal­lenge.

“I was not scared of Rush­ton, and I’m still not scared,” Bridge­lal said.

She ar­gued that while the UNC promised much, her plans for the con­stituen­cy were more ground­ed in re­al­i­ty.

Bridge­lal’s fo­cus is on ful­fill­ing the com­mu­ni­ty’s ba­sic needs, in­clud­ing clean en­vi­ron­ments, road re­pairs, and re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply. She al­so sug­gest­ed that Ma­yaro’s tourism po­ten­tial was un­tapped and could con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the lo­cal econ­o­my.

“I will en­sure every­thing works be­cause that is my main aim. I want to see here as a bou­tique con­stituen­cy. Peo­ple must come to the area. Like Ma­yaro it­self, is like a gi­ant for tourism, just wait­ing to be ex­plored and I am anx­ious to start do­ing that.”

Po­lit­i­cal shake-up

Paray served as Ma­yaro’s MP for nine years and sev­en months af­ter win­ning the seat in the Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015, gen­er­al elec­tion.

Af­ter 2020, Paray be­came in­creas­ing­ly vo­cal on lo­cal is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing dis­as­ter re­spons­es to flood­ing and land­slides.

He open­ly crit­i­cised both gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion lead­er­ship on trans­paren­cy is­sues.

Ten­sions be­tween Paray and the UNC lead­er­ship es­ca­lat­ed in 2024. His call for the UNC to hold its in­ter­nal elec­tions, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in June 2024, drew sharp crit­i­cism from par­ty lead­ers.

Paray led the “Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots” slate in the UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tions. The slate, which in­clud­ed out­spo­ken MPs Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne and Dr Rai Rag­bir, was de­feat­ed by the Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led “Star” team, fur­ther mar­gin­al­is­ing Paray and his al­lies with­in the par­ty.

De­spite the grow­ing rift, Paray pre­sent­ed him­self be­fore the UNC’s screen­ing com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary as a prospec­tive can­di­date. How­ev­er, he was re­placed by Mor­ris.

Though by­passed by the UNC, Paray has not ruled out con­tin­u­ing his po­lit­i­cal jour­ney—pos­si­bly as an in­de­pen­dent or with an­oth­er par­ty.

“I’m lis­ten­ing, re­flect­ing, and talk­ing with the peo­ple of Ma­yaro. I am still a life­time mem­ber of the UNC. If there’s strong sup­port and a clear path to con­tin­ue serv­ing ef­fec­tive­ly—whether in­de­pen­dent­ly or with an­oth­er team—I’ll con­sid­er it se­ri­ous­ly. But it won’t be about ego or re­venge. It’ll be about what’s best for the con­stituen­cy and the coun­try,” he said when con­tact­ed this week on his fu­ture.

Asked whether the move could af­fect the UNC’s chances in Ma­yaro, Paray said that de­pends on how the par­ty moves for­ward.

“If they feel this de­ci­sion was im­posed with­out con­sul­ta­tion or fair­ness, it could af­fect sup­port.”

Still, his mes­sage was one of grat­i­tude.

“I un­der­stand the dis­ap­point­ment... I’m still here. My com­mit­ment to Ma­yaro hasn’t changed.”


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