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KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

While the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has said good rid­dance to in­cum­bent Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la Dr Rai Rag­bir, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) does not have room for him ei­ther.

Al­though the PNM is still with­out a Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la can­di­date ahead of the next gen­er­al elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said yes­ter­day that the dead­line for nom­i­na­tions for that seat had al­ready passed.

He made the com­ment dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, as spec­u­la­tion was rife that Rag­bir may end up in the PNM hav­ing de­liv­ered a scathing at­tack on the lead­er­ship of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Thurs­day, af­ter an­nounc­ing he would not screen for the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la seat he cur­rent­ly holds.

While the PNM will be screen­ing Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la can­di­dates on Mon­day, Row­ley put to bed ru­mours sug­gest­ing Rag­bir had a chance.

“Let me tell you why that is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty, the PNM has dead­line dates. We have open­ing and clos­ing. The rea­son why we’re screen­ing on Mon­day is that the nom­i­na­tion is closed,” he said.

“I’ll tell you some­thing else too about the PNM, we don’t have ad hoc screen­ing com­mit­tees. The screen­ing com­mit­tee in the PNM is a con­sti­tu­tion­al gath­er­ing of peo­ple who get on that com­mit­tee on­ly by virtue of the ex­ec­u­tive of­fice that they hold in the par­ty, so we’re not open to these kinds of arrange­ments.”

He added that un­der his par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion, it’s al­so not pos­si­ble to have a sit­ting Op­po­si­tion MP screened.

This will be the fourth time the PNM is screen­ing for this con­stituen­cy, hav­ing not been sat­is­fied with pre­vi­ous nom­i­nees and one se­lect­ed can­di­date bowed out.

But, when it comes to views on the UNC’s lead­er­ship Row­ley and Rag­bir are in agree­ment.

Ref­er­enc­ing Rag­bir’s com­ments in an­nounc­ing his re­fusal to screen for the UNC, Row­ley said, “When a mem­ber of her team in the par­lia­ment pre­sent­ed a com­ment to the coun­try ex­plain­ing why he would not be screened un­der her and her friends, this is a par­lia­men­tar­i­an talk­ing about a par­ty in the par­lia­ment, that ‘it’s a par­ty that has aban­doned its prin­ci­ples, re­wards medi­oc­rity, shields those ac­cused of wrong­do­ing and pun­ish­es in­tegri­ty’. Those are the words of the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la de­scrib­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion led and de­fend­ed by Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. His words, not mine.”

At­tempts to con­tact Rag­bir were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed by sources close to him that he is yet to make a de­ci­sion on his fu­ture with the UNC but is still com­mit­ted to fix­ing in­ter­nal par­ty is­sues.

Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter that the PNM had a process they could not de­part from.

He not­ed, though, that if Rag­bir were so dis­sat­is­fied with Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship, the op­tion of join­ing the PNM should have come be­fore now.

“If they (dis­si­dent UNC MPs) felt so strong­ly about their par­ty’s lead­er­ship or the par­ty’s po­si­tion on a mat­ter con­sis­tent­ly, and if they felt very strong­ly about their com­fort lev­els with­in the par­ty, then they had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­so have con­ver­sa­tions across the po­lit­i­cal floor to de­cide whether or not they want­ed to be a part of the PNM, and I think none of that was prob­a­bly ex­plored. There­fore, the process for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is on the way, it’s al­most com­plet­ed. It’s not that they were not good enough.”

How­ev­er, he said Rag­bir chose a smart way to bow out of pol­i­tics.

“Dr Rag­bir would have sub­ject­ed him­self to the very same screen­ing com­mit­tee five years ago which would have giv­en him the abil­i­ty to serve his con­stituen­cy of Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la then. I think it is a smart way of bow­ing out of pol­i­tics be­cause you al­ready know what the out­come is, plain and sim­ple.”

Al­so asked whether Dr Rag­bir could even­tu­al­ly find a place in the PNM, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany said one needs to keep an eye on the trans­fer of pow­er from Dr Row­ley to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

While his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture re­mains un­sure, Rag­bir con­tin­ued to re­ceive sup­port from the oth­er so-called dis­si­dent UNC MPs.

Ch­agua­nas East MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly yes­ter­day thanked his col­league for his ser­vice.

Ram­bal­ly said, “I wish him all the best and I con­tin­ue to hold a view that he is a de­cent per­son and I have re­spect for him. He is a pro­fes­sion­al and I know him to be a fam­i­ly man as well, so I would re­al­ly want to wish him all the best mov­ing for­ward.”

At­tempts to con­tact Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes and Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.