DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

One of the five so-called “dis­si­dents” with­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has not ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of join­ing an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty if he is not se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent his con­stituen­cy.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray pre­sent­ed him­self for screen­ing on Mon­day night as the Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ued its se­lec­tion process for five elec­toral seats—Cou­va North, Cou­va South, Ca­roni Cen­tral, Ma­yaro, and Tu­na­puna.

Both in­cum­bents and as­pir­ing can­di­dates ar­rived at the UNC head­quar­ters in a fes­tive at­mos­phere. The event fea­tured tas­sa drum­mers, African drum­mers, moko jumbies, In­di­an and African dancers, and even cos­tumed Trans­form­ers, cre­at­ing a car­ni­val-like am­bi­ence.

Out­side, sup­port­ers en­joyed dou­bles, burg­ers, and pop­corn—some sold, some giv­en away—while in­side, se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal busi­ness un­fold­ed.

Paray told Guardian Me­dia that he does not con­sid­er him­self a dis­si­dent and in­sist­ed he was not there to crit­i­cise his par­ty or its po­lit­i­cal leader. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that he had not shut the door on oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties that align with his vi­sion for T&T if he is not cho­sen.

“There is no ques­tion about leav­ing any­thing. This is the par­ty I sub­scribed to over ten years ago,” he af­firmed.

How­ev­er, he added, “As a mat­ter of fact, there are al­ways op­tions—whether it’s in the UNC, some­where else, or in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment as a pri­vate cit­i­zen. I think we can do the work and fix this place.”

Paray al­so had words of en­cour­age­ment for his chal­lenger Nicholas Mor­ris, whom he de­scribed as a “ground­ed, bright young man” and a promis­ing fig­ure for both the par­ty and the na­tion’s fu­ture. He wished Mor­ris well in the process.

Mean­while, Mor­ris ar­rived with tas­sa drum­mers and sup­port­ers wav­ing ban­ners and posters fea­tur­ing his im­age. De­spite chal­leng­ing an in­cum­bent MP who ap­pears to have fall­en out of favour with the po­lit­i­cal leader, Mor­ris ex­pressed con­fi­dence in a fair screen­ing process.

“Back in 2010, sev­er­al mem­bers of Par­lia­ment did not sup­port Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she be­came leader of the Op­po­si­tion and of the par­ty, yet she re­in­stat­ed them in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has a track record of screen­ing mem­bers fair­ly and eq­ui­tably. So this screen­ing process will not just be fair, but just,” Mor­ris stat­ed.

Al­so present at the screen­ing was Christo­pher Boodram, the lone sur­vivor of the Paria div­ing tragedy. Boodram ex­pressed his be­lief that a UNC gov­ern­ment would be the best op­tion for work­ing-class cit­i­zens seek­ing im­proved health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions in the work­place. He crit­i­cised the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion for fail­ing to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions from the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria in­ci­dent.

“I know MP In­dars­ingh is a union man, so he will help fight and sup­port the cause,” Boodram said in favour of Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh.

He al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Well Ser­vices em­ploy­ee Pe­te Phillip, who went miss­ing when Rig 110 par­tial­ly col­lapsed in­to the ocean near the Trin­mar base in Point Fortin on De­cem­ber 22. Phillip’s body has yet to be re­cov­ered.

“We can see that they (the Gov­ern­ment) don’t care about health and safe­ty in the in­dus­try be­cause they haven’t tak­en any of the rec­om­men­da­tions or im­ple­ment­ed them in any way,” Boodram em­pha­sised.

“Work­ing folks, when we go out there, we go­ing to make an hon­est dol­lar. And to go out there and get dam­aged and then no­body care about yuh, is a very hard thing. As far as I see, the PNM is not do­ing any­thing for us, the work­ing class. Not even in the gov­ern­ment sec­tor.”

Fol­low­ing the screen­ing, both Paray and UNC coun­cil­lor Vis­han Mo­hammed—who is chal­leng­ing Ravi Rati­ram for the Cou­va North seat—de­scribed the process as smooth.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s per­spec­tive

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was en­cour­aged by the turnout of sup­port­ers and re­it­er­at­ed her com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing press­ing na­tion­al con­cerns.

“The two ma­jor is­sues from (in­de­pen­dent) polling are crime and, you would not be­lieve, health­care. Be­cause if you dead, you can’t en­joy any­thing else. And the health sec­tor is so bad, so that is very, very high up on the totem poll,” she stat­ed.

She al­so dis­missed claims that she aligns with right-wing ide­olo­gies, sim­i­lar to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“I think the left has gone too far left, and the right has gone too far right. We need bal­ance—dead cen­tre—be­cause that’s where we are,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar em­pha­sised that the UNC re­mains open to the pub­lic’s views on con­tro­ver­sial is­sues such as women’s re­pro­duc­tive rights, abor­tion, and LGBTQ+ rights through ref­er­en­dums. She al­so reaf­firmed the par­ty’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing so­cial pro­grammes.

Ram­samooj: Fail­ure to win could end Kam­la’s ca­reer

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj warned that the up­com­ing elec­tion is cru­cial for Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s fu­ture, stat­ing that fail­ure to win could mark the end of her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

“The last po­lit­i­cal rites will be had on the night of the elec­tion of her lead­er­ship,” Ram­samooj said dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on The Morn­ing Brew.

He ques­tioned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s strat­e­gy of wait­ing un­til the tenth year in op­po­si­tion to form a coali­tion, call­ing it “po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunism” and sug­gest­ing she is now at­tempt­ing to ad­dress the UNC’s long-stand­ing weak­ness­es by ap­peal­ing to the work­ing class.

“This jump­ing up one morn­ing and talk­ing about ‘coali­tion of in­ter­ests’, we have yet to un­der­stand what the in­ter­est is. What will the trade unions get? How much of a salary in­crease are they go­ing to get? What are the terms of the coali­tion of in­ter­ests?” he asked.

Ram­samooj al­so high­light­ed the his­tor­i­cal fail­ure of coali­tion pol­i­tics in T&T, cit­ing the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR), which won in 1986 but was re­ject­ed by vot­ers five years lat­er.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for fail­ing to trans­form the UNC in­to a true na­tion­al par­ty de­spite a decade in op­po­si­tion.

“It is sym­bol­ic that you gave up that ca­pac­i­ty to win seats from the east-west Cor­ri­dor and are join­ing with fringe par­ties at best ... with par­ties who at best will get not thou­sands of votes but hun­dreds of votes. And to be winnable on the east-west Cor­ri­dor, you need to have the ca­pac­i­ty to prob­a­bly be be­tween 10,000 and 12,000 votes to be in the game.”

He ar­gued that this move sig­nals an ad­mis­sion that the UNC re­mains a par­ty pri­mar­i­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with south Trinidad, lack­ing the abil­i­ty to ex­pand its ap­peal to ur­ban ar­eas like Diego Mar­tin or even To­ba­go.

Ram­samooj al­so dis­missed the in­flu­ence of trade unions in mod­ern pol­i­tics, call­ing them a “dy­ing po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence” whose lead­ers live lifestyles far re­moved from the work­ing-class cit­i­zens they claim to rep­re­sent.