Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray is adamant that he is not giv­ing up his fight for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to set an ex­act date for in­ter­nal elec­tions, as he be­lieves it is in the best in­ter­est of his par­ty.

How­ev­er po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists be­lieve Paray is, in fact, now em­bar­rass­ing the par­ty with his ap­proach to the is­sue.

De­spite say­ing he will not fur­ther this dis­cus­sion in the me­dia, hours lat­er, Paray was a guest on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew with host Ja­son Williams ad­dress­ing the is­sue.

Paray said he thought it nec­es­sary to clar­i­fy his state­ment on Wednes­day, which he be­lieved was in­ter­pret­ed as him step­ping back from the is­sue.

“I want to make this clear, I am not in the busi­ness of stand­ing down, I am in the busi­ness of stand­ing up,” Paray said.

He said he had tak­en note of leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and one of her deputy lead­ers seek­ing to as­sure the par­ty that the in­ter­nal elec­tions will be held when con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. How­ev­er, he said that is not good enough.

“I want to go fur­ther, I want the par­ty, the lead­er­ship of the par­ty, to call the date. I want par­tic­i­pa­tion from the wide se­lec­tion of our mem­bers. So, you need enough time to do that,” he said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this week that the con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for a min­i­mum of five weeks’ no­tice ahead of the in­ter­nal elec­tion.

Paray al­so ad­dressed claims by Per­sad-Bisses­sar that he is a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) op­er­a­tive.

“Let me put this to rest for the nine­ty-ninth time, all of these al­le­ga­tions are po­lit­i­cal cam­paign ban­ter in the 2015 elec­tions. Dur­ing the screen­ing in 2015, the very same Na­tex com­mit­tee who screened me iden­ti­fied it was fool­ish­ness and ap­proved me in 2015. I served five years, I came back in 2020, all of these mat­ters were on the dock­et, again they iden­ti­fied ‘Paray, it is fool­ish­ness and move on, you will con­tin­ue to serve and be the can­di­date,’” Paray as­sert­ed, won­der­ing why his loy­al­ty is now be­ing ques­tioned.

“So, I find it very strange that these things are com­ing back up to stir in the pot. But that is okay, that is the pol­i­tics of this coun­try, and we re­main stead­fast in en­sur­ing an in­ter­nal elec­tion must be called and we can make the UNC stronger to be a stronger Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves Paray is do­ing quite the op­po­site and is em­bar­rass­ing the par­ty.

“Par­ty pol­i­tics is par­ty pol­i­tics busi­ness. He de­cid­ed he is go­ing to come and talk about par­ty pol­i­tics busi­ness in a press con­fer­ence, which im­me­di­ate­ly takes it out of the par­ty busi­ness be­cause this should have been han­dled in­ter­nal­ly,” Ra­goonath told Guardian Me­dia.

Ra­goonath said the PNM would nev­er han­dle in­ter­nal is­sues in such a man­ner.

“Do you hear the PNM wash­ing their dirty linen in pub­lic? They con­sol­i­date with­in the par­ty; they don’t come out­side and make their noise. And by com­ing out­side and mak­ing your noise, you are in ef­fect putting the par­ty’s name in­to dis­re­pute in the eyes of the pub­lic, who will be called up­on to vote,” Ra­goonath as­sert­ed.

He al­so be­lieves those who feel the UNC’s na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive should sim­ply set an in­ter­nal elec­tion date do not un­der­stand pol­i­tics.

“She goes ahead and names a date, we have a by-elec­tion com­ing for Moru­ga, so the PNM de­cides to call that elec­tion two weeks or the week af­ter when she names the date, and then, of course, the UNC will wash all their dirty linen in pub­lic when one slate cam­paigns against an­oth­er slate and how will that win them an elec­tion? It’s not as sim­ple as call­ing a date,” he asked.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad al­so be­lieves Paray’s ap­proach was not in the best in­ter­est of the UNC.

She be­lieves this was a play by Paray to un­seat Per­sad-Bisses­sar as leader, which fiz­zled out to a call for in­ter­nal elec­tions, adding this is why Per­sad-Bisses­sar had to take a stern po­si­tion on her MP’s con­duct.

“I think ba­si­cal­ly, she is lay­ing the ground rules for all of them to fol­low, all of them who think they can be a mem­ber of the par­ty and just car­ry on. You see it was nev­er just call­ing for in­ter­nal elec­tions, be­cause they al­ways do call their in­ter­nal elec­tions, so he was call­ing for her to go, that was the move­ment, then he toned down and said he is just call­ing for in­ter­nal elec­tions,” Ram­per­sad said.

Ani­ta still be­hind Ma­yaro MP

But Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne be­lieves there was noth­ing wrong with Paray’s process. While say­ing she is not part of any coali­tion with Paray and re­it­er­at­ing sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar as leader, Haynes-Al­leyne said there is mer­it to Paray’s call.

“I do not think any­one men­tioned KPB at all and then there was a slew of me­dia re­leas­es with peo­ple say­ing they sup­port Kam­la, and that is why I came out on Mon­day and said you can sup­port Kam­la and you can sup­port in­ter­nal elec­tions. Kam­la right now, as of to­day, is the du­ly elect­ed leader of the UNC and based on the man­date, she has our sup­port, but that sup­port does not pre­vent you from say­ing that in­ter­nal elec­tions are due by June 2024 and they should be held,” Haynes-Al­leyne main­tained.

She said whether the PNM would have han­dled it the same way was ir­rel­e­vant.

“The key part of be­ing a mem­ber of the UNC is that we al­ways un­der­stood it to be a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tion and how that democ­ra­cy shows it­self is re­al­ly im­por­tant. The ques­tion of whether or not you are see­ing the PNM do­ing this, there’s a rea­son I did not join the PNM be­cause for gov­er­nance to be prop­er and for the wider pub­lic, there is no is­sue with it be­ing ven­ti­lat­ed in the pub­lic do­main, once it is done in a re­spect­ful man­ner and I did not see any­thing dis­re­spect­ful about the call at all,” Haynes-Al­leyne ar­gued.

In a sea of sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar as leader from var­i­ous MPs fol­low­ing Paray’s pub­lic call for elec­tions, Haynes-Al­leyne in­stead sought to con­tex­tu­alise Paray’s words by again stat­ing it is not an at­tack on the lead­er­ship.

How­ev­er, she said she was not con­cerned about be­ing black­list­ed by her leader.

“I am not wor­ried at all be­cause any po­si­tion you take in­side of pol­i­tics and out­side of pol­i­tics, what you ought to be able to do is speak up for the right thing. I be­lieve hold­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions, those things are the right things to do,” she said.