KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Out­spo­ken Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray says he would like to see the chil­dren and rel­a­tives of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) lead­ers par­tic­i­pate in the par­ty’s gov­er­nance.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Li­on’s Club of Ma­yaro Fish­ing Com­pe­ti­tion on Sat­ur­day, Paray made the com­ment in re­sponse to Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles’ call for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­sign and make way for younger lead­ers.

Paray said there was a fan­tas­tic role for young peo­ple to play in T&T, adding he would like to be in an or­gan­i­sa­tion that cre­at­ed a space for them.

“I would like to see Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s grand­son, her nieces and nephews, and my daugh­ters par­tic­i­pate in the gov­er­nance process in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress,” Paray said

Dur­ing a me­dia state­ment on Wednes­day, Charles again sup­port­ed Paray’s call for the UNC to host its Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive (Na­tex) elec­tions this year, as con­ver­sa­tions sur­faced that the par­ty want­ed to post­pone the in­ter­nal polls to fo­cus on the gen­er­al elec­tions due next year.

How­ev­er, Paray, Charles, Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne and Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly have all pub­licly crit­i­cised sug­ges­tions of post­pon­ing the in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Paray said he sus­pect­ed more UNC mem­bers would come out and sup­port the call for the in­ter­nal polls. Al­though he re­ceived sharp crit­i­cism with­in the par­ty for voic­ing his opin­ions, Paray said there was no dra­ma with his re­cent ac­tions, as all he did was make a call for a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed process with­in the par­ty. In­stead, he said, the dra­ma seemed to be in the me­dia.

Paray said even non-UNC mem­bers sup­port­ed his call for the par­ty to host the elec­tions, say­ing it was a cul­ture and lan­guage for change in all po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions. He said if it sparked a fire for change in gov­er­nance, it would make a bet­ter T&T for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, prepar­ing them for the in­com­ing glob­al chal­lenges.

He said the com­men­tary in the con­stituen­cy had been favourable, while sur­veys done by me­dia hous­es re­turned pos­i­tive feed­back to his po­si­tion. He said many of his Op­po­si­tion col­leagues sup­port­ed his call for the in­ter­nal elec­tions, adding he main­tained an ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship with them.

“Pri­vate­ly, they are all in sup­port. Like most peo­ple, I know how the pol­i­tics is. There are al­ways cir­cum­stances be­yond their con­trol to make pub­lic ut­ter­ances at the end of the day. What I did, I spoke to the many ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers in Ma­yaro. I spoke to the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the 400 ac­tivists that form the Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy elec­tion ma­chin­ery and with their per­mis­sion and con­sen­sus of ap­proval, I made the state­ment that the par­ty must con­duct its in­ter­nal elec­tions and al­low the widest mem­ber­ship to par­tic­i­pate.”

Paray not­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­mit­ted to hold­ing the elec­tions when con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due, which should be around June 23 or 24. Paray said he was look­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cast his vote.