Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is sup­port­ing po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and has dis­tanced it­self from the state­ments and ac­tions of MP Rush­ton Paray.

“Mr Paray has his views and those are his views but this is the stance of the Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive at this time. There’s one leader and we sup­port her,” con­stituen­cy chair­man Shaf­fick Mo­hammed said yes­ter­day.

In a state­ment, af­ter Paray chal­lenged the par­ty’s lead­er­ship to hold Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions by June, the Ma­yaro ex­ec­u­tive said they “stand firm­ly and res­olute­ly in sup­port and en­dorse­ment of our po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive”.

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “We can al­so at­test to the fact that our par­ty has been found­ed up­on strong and re­silient de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples and tra­di­tions which has (sic) nev­er been com­pro­mised. This is ev­i­denced by the ‘one man one vote’ mech­a­nism which en­sures that all mem­bers are af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in all ac­tiv­i­ties and elec­tions of the par­ty.

“We are there­fore con­fi­dent our po­lit­i­cal leader and na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive will con­tin­ue to pre­serve, pro­tect and ad­here to all the pro­vi­sions en­shrined in our par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion in the in­ter­est of our mem­ber­ship.

“In the mean­time, just like our fel­low con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives, we are fo­cused on mo­bil­is­ing and putting our elec­toral sys­tems in place as we pre­pare for a gen­er­al elec­tion to re­move and get rid of this most cor­rupt, in­com­pe­tent, in­sen­si­tive and wicked PNM Gov­ern­ment. We stand ready and com­mit­ted to work­ing with our po­lit­i­cal leader, the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive and oth­er arms of the par­ty in re­al­is­ing these ob­jec­tives, not on­ly for our mem­ber­ship but the wider so­ci­ety. We are al­so of the firm view that uni­ty will pre­vail and the UNC and Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will rise again.”

Mo­hammed said the ex­ec­u­tive met Fri­day af­ter Paray’s press brief­ing.

“We stand by the par­ty and lead­er­ship and my be­lief is every­body needs to get on board for the gen­er­al elec­tion and pull to­geth­er as a team for the UNC to win Gov­ern­ment,” he added.

Asked whether Ma­yaro ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers had signed nom­i­na­tion forms en­dors­ing any Ma­yaro nom­i­nees, Mo­hammed said he didn’t know who had filed nom­i­na­tions but re­it­er­at­ed that who­ev­er is cho­sen, “we’ll stand by them and work with them”.

Paray has been MP since 2015. Mo­hammed said most of the peo­ple who func­tioned as MPs for the area did what they had to, since it has been dif­fi­cult be­ing in op­po­si­tion.

“This area has been ne­glect­ed for nine-plus years. We need a lot of things - roads, in­fra­struc­ture, wa­ter. We have wa­ter prob­lems week­ly. Ma­yaro Beach is sup­posed to be the Mi­a­mi of the Caribbean but we have lim­it­ed life­guards and fa­cil­i­ties,” he added.

Re­spond­ing in a state­ment to the Ma­yaro ex­ec­u­tive’s move, Paray said they were ex­er­cis­ing their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to have a po­si­tion on any par­ty mat­ter.

“It’s the right of each per­son to ex­er­cise their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to have a po­si­tion on any par­ty mat­ter. I will de­fend my col­leagues’ right to their po­si­tion all the time. At the same time, the rights of the thou­sands of or­di­nary mem­bers to have the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due Na­tex elec­tions date called must be re­spect­ed,” he said.

There are re­ports that the pres­ence of Hen­ry Awong, deputy chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, at the head ta­ble for Paray’s me­dia brief­ing caused great con­cern in the UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion. Awong, who head­ed the cor­po­ra­tion for sev­er­al years, was re­placed as chair­man by Ryan Ram­per­sad af­ter last year’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.