Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Now that cam­paign­ing for the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions has come to an end, deputy leader hope­ful David Lee is ex­press­ing re­lief af­ter ac­cus­ing the process of be­ing ‘nasty’ and ‘bruis­ing’. 

But the leader of the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate wants Lee to pro­vide ev­i­dence to back that as­ser­tion. 

Speak­ing be­fore en­ter­ing the Red House yes­ter­day for a sit­ting of the Low­er House, Lee was asked if there would be uni­ty in the UNC fol­low­ing to­day’s elec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the par­ty has a his­to­ry of vit­ri­olic cam­paigns. 

“It is up to them, the ball is in their court” Lee re­spond­ed ref­er­enc­ing mem­bers of the Pa­tri­ots slate, he added, “Some­times it (cam­paign­ing) can get very nasty which we have been see­ing in this elec­tion. It has been a bruis­ing con­test, and I am per­son­al­ly hap­py it will be over to­mor­row.” 

But Rush­ton Paray, who is al­so con­test­ing one of the three deputy leader po­si­tions against Lee and oth­ers on the Star Team’s slate, is chal­leng­ing Lee to “iden­ti­fy one item of bruis­ing.” 

“I can tell you that the team that was as­sem­bled, sat on a phi­los­o­phy that we are go­ing to be very in­spi­ra­tional to the elec­torate. I haven’t heard any­thing from my team, if any­thing came from my team, I would have pulled them up on that,” Paray posit­ed. 

On the night he launched his slate at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas, Paray said he would not be bait­ed in­to “mud­sling­ing” and “harsh words.” 

Al­so re­spond­ing to claims that the cam­paign has been dis­re­spect­ful, par­tic­u­lar­ly to­wards po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne who is deputy leader can­di­date on Paray’s slate said, “I think cer­tain­ly on my end I have main­tained a com­mit­ment to work with every­body, from the be­gin­ning I have not­ed that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is they du­ly elect­ed leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress,  I have not swayed from that.” 

Com­ment­ing on so­cial me­dia crit­i­cism of her re­fer­ring to Per­sad-Bisses­sar as “Kam­la” on the cam­paign trail, Haynes-Al­leyne ex­plained, “My ref­er­ence was to her slate be­cause she said sup­port Kam­la’s slate so I said there can be no Kam­la’s slate, so it was just a re­sponse to an in­sin­u­a­tion that was made.” 

With re­spect to each slate’s chances of vic­to­ry, David Lee said he was sure that the “stars will shine.” 

“We have done the ground­work, we had close to over 90 cot­tage meet­ings through­out Trinidad as far as Diego Mar­tin to Moru­ga, so we have done the work,” Lee said. 

His par­lia­men­tary col­league and Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe al­so agreed that the Star Team “has a very good chance” of vic­to­ry. 

But Paray main­tained that his slate had kept an ex­cel­lent ‘line and length’ and he had no re­grets for chal­leng­ing the par­ty and pub­lic crit­i­cis­ing its cur­rent lead­er­ship and ex­ec­u­tive. 

“I am ab­solute­ly ex­cit­ed. We have done the work, we have main­tained a very pro­fes­sion­al cam­paign, we have tried some­thing dif­fer­ent. I think the coun­try has res­onat­ed well. Our young elec­torate has been su­per hap­py with what we’ve done in terms of our length and line and we’re ready for the elec­tion day. All our sys­tems are in place, and we are ex­cit­ed to go,” he said out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. 

Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, who is al­so con­test­ing the post of deputy po­lit­i­cal leader un­der the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots ban­ner, said she was cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that peo­ple would ac­cept their of­fer of change, but she said their vic­to­ry was con­tin­gent on good vot­er turnout. 

When asked if she was con­cerned that most of the elec­torate would come from the Siparia and Oropouche con­stituen­cies which have his­tor­i­cal­ly shown a loy­al­ty to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Haynes-Al­leyne coun­tered, “But we have con­stituen­cies like Tabaquite and Na­pari­ma and last night I was in Siparia and we had a very good turnout for our meet­ing. So yeah, I be­lieve it would be a good turnout across the con­stituen­cies.” 

The Tabaquite MP said the par­ty could move for­ward to­geth­er if there was a com­mit­ment to po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty from mem­bers of both slates. 

Na­pari­ma MP, Rod­ney Charles, who is al­so sup­port­ing Paray’s slate said it would be an up­hill bat­tle for the Pa­tri­ots to re­move the sea­soned politi­cians on the Star Team. 

“Dif­fi­cult, it will be dif­fi­cult. Be­cause you’re fight­ing in­cum­ben­cy, but we have a chance,” he told Guardian Me­dia. 

But PNM mem­bers of par­lia­ment want no change to the cur­rent UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive line-up. 

Per­haps face­tious­ly, Lopinot/Bon Air West MP, Mar­vin Gon­za­les proud­ly backed the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed Star Team. 

“I am sup­port­ing Mrs. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to win that elec­tion be­cause I am cer­tain it would ce­ment the PNM in pow­er for the next 15 years. She’s been a fan­tas­tic leader of the Op­po­si­tion, she’s been lead­ing a fan­tas­tic team on the op­po­si­tion side. They are a bunch of in­com­pe­tents and as long as they are there, we will pro­vide good gov­er­nance to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Gon­za­les said while laugh­ing. 

Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce held sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. 

“As a PNM it re­al­ly does not mat­ter but you heard my boss, the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing he would sup­port the Op­po­si­tion Leader,” Leonce said. 

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion as the po­lit­i­cal leader is not be­ing con­test­ed, but the PNM MP’s an­swers seem­ing­ly gave cred­it to the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots’ claim that her in­volve­ment in Team Star’s cam­paign could give the er­ro­neous per­cep­tion that she was be­ing chal­lenged as leader. 

Mean­while, Point Fortin MP Kennedy Richards did not have a pre­ferred win­ner, but he did, how­ev­er, make a pre­dic­tion. 

“I think Kam­la is go­ing to win, yea I think she’s go­ing to win. But good luck to the UNC and their in­ter­nals,” Richards said as he walked in­to the Par­lia­ment com­pound. 

Oth­er PNM MPs told Guardian Me­dia they were not get­ting in­volved in UNC busi­ness or “bac­cha­nal.” 

Re­gard­ing the uni­ty of the par­ty af­ter the in­ter­nal elec­tion re­sults, both Paray and Lee ex­pect­ed that dif­fer­ences would be put aside as they pre­pared for next year’s gen­er­al elec­tions. 

Lee said, “The good thing about the UNC is we are like a rub­ber band. We are very re­silient, and we al­ways bounce back. We are one par­ty that will al­ways come to­geth­er to take the par­ty for­ward.” 

Mean­while, Paray sought to rub­bish claims that he and the oth­er dis­grun­tled MPs would break rank with the UNC and join oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties. 

“This has noth­ing to do with what any­body wants out­side of the UNC, our ba­sic tagline was a stronger UNC for a stronger Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said. 

Reg­is­tered vot­ers will have be­tween 8 am and 6 pm to­day to cast their bal­lots.