SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

She is the lone fe­male to call for in­ter­nal elec­tions in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), a year be­fore a gen­er­al elec­tion in which the par­ty will seek a na­tion­al man­date to gov­ern T&T. For Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, it is clear the fu­ture is not with po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. In this ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, she tells us why.

Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne has not spo­ken to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar since March 1. That’s more than two months of no di­a­logue be­tween the two women.

On her end, how­ev­er, Haynes-Al­leyne in­sists there is no strained re­la­tion­ship.

“I would hope not,” she said when asked if the re­la­tion­ship be­tween her­self and Per­sad-Bisses­sar had been strained.

“Or­di­nar­i­ly, it is not to say we are in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But I would hope that if in­deed there is some­thing that ought to be re­solved, I re­main open and will­ing to have any con­ver­sa­tion. On my end, there is no strained re­la­tion­ship. I can say that.”

The last time Haynes-Al­leyne spoke with Per­sad-Bisses­sar was March 1 dur­ing Pri­vate Mem­bers’ Day in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, her re­la­tion­ship with the Op­po­si­tion MPs and the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tives re­mains cor­dial.

In the last few weeks, Haynes-Al­leyne was one of five sit­ting MPs who called on the UNC to hold its in­ter­nal elec­tions when they are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in June.

The oth­er MPs are Rush­ton Paray, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Dr Rai Rag­bir and Rod­ney Charles.

In a state­ment, the UNC re­spond­ed to the MPs’ calls, stat­ing the in­ter­nal elec­tions would not be de­layed and the par­ty would ad­here to its con­sti­tu­tion.

Hav­ing closed off the par­ty’s nom­i­na­tion day for per­sons seek­ing to run for of­fice in next year’s gen­er­al elec­tions, Haynes-Al­leyne felt the date for the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions should have al­ready been an­nounced by Per­sad-Bisses­sar to start prepar­ing the UNC for the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

“What ap­pears to me is that per­sons are cam­paign­ing in the in­ter­nal elec­tion with­out the in­ter­nal elec­tion hav­ing been called.”

As it stands, she said, some peo­ple in the par­ty have al­ready cho­sen a side.

“And I think that is pre­ma­ture. Un­til an elec­tion date is an­nounced there is no need to back an in­di­vid­ual or in­di­vid­u­als pri­or to peo­ple vy­ing for a po­si­tion. That is where the con­fu­sion lies.”

She said sev­er­al UNC MPs have is­sued press re­leas­es stat­ing they would throw their sup­port be­hind the po­lit­i­cal leader.

Haynes-Al­leyne not­ed that words such as dis­si­dents, trou­ble­mak­ers and un­der­min­ers were used to de­scribe the five MPs who ex­er­cised their rights for the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tion to be called.

Last Tues­day, Haynes-Al­leyne sat down with the T&T Guardian at her Gas­par­il­lo of­fice to speak about the firestorm she has found her­self in for open­ly talk­ing out.

She al­so came un­der at­tack from Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the par­ty’s 35th an­niver­sary last Sat­ur­day, for not be­ing in Par­lia­ment when the Gov­ern­ment MPs vot­ed to ex­tend the dead­line for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port.

At that func­tion, an­gry UNC sup­port­ers called on the po­lit­i­cal leader to fire the five dis­si­dent MPs.

Haynes-Al­leyne had sent an ex­cuse for leave of the House that day.

Though she has be­come im­mune to the jabs and name-call­ing, Haynes-Al­leyne said what has been un­fold­ing late­ly has been a bit­ter pill to swal­low, giv­en her com­mit­ment and loy­al­ty to the par­ty.

“I am not a con­tro­ver­sial per­son. I am an out­spo­ken per­son. It has been some­what dif­fi­cult in terms of when you en­ter Par­lia­ment, when you en­ter oth­er UNC spaces, if per­sons would speak with you or if they would not.”Haynes-Al­leyne said she did not at­tend the par­ty’s 35th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion in Ch­agua­nas af­ter get­ting wind that the at­mos­phere might have been tense.

She re­mem­bered get­ting dressed to at­tend the event, on­ly to be told by UNC ac­tivists that there may be “an at­tempt to make the at­mos­phere very un­com­fort­able. So I thought about it ... and say if my pres­ence there would take away from the sig­nif­i­cance of the an­niver­sary. I would not wish to do that”.

It was a de­ci­sion she did not re­gret, giv­en what played out.

Haynes-Al­leyne al­so took um­brage to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s scathing at­tack on her work eth­ic and had to is­sue a state­ment that it was an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, she said, al­so im­plied that the ac­tions of the five MPs were sin­is­ter.

“And it was put in the pub­lic that this was some col­lu­sion meant to weak­en the par­ty. I found that to be such a de­lib­er­ate di­vi­sive line. These points of par­lia­men­tary at­ten­dance or at­tempts to un­der­mine ... and who is a PNM agent I think those things di­min­ish the con­ver­sa­tion.”

When Haynes-Al­leyne ap­plied for leave last Fri­day, she had no idea that the mo­tion was on the cards, stat­ing that “they know that...any­thing else is just mis­chie­vous.”

Seek­ing Tabaquite again

Last month, Haynes-Al­leyne filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers to be screened for the Tabaquite seat.

Asked if she was op­ti­mistic of her chances, Haynes-Al­leyne said she is keep­ing her fin­gers crossed.

“Rea­son­ably speak­ing, I think the re­sults of the in­ter­nal elec­tion will de­ter­mine whether or not I feel I can be fair­ly treat­ed.”

If she is not giv­en the nod, Haynes-Al­leyne said she con­sid­ers her­self to be high­ly em­ploy­able and would find her niche. How­ev­er, she would not turn her back on the prin­ci­ples of the par­ty.

Asked if she would vie for a po­si­tion on the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive, she re­spond­ed: “I am cer­tain­ly look­ing in­to it. I have not made a hard and fast de­ci­sion on which po­si­tion but I do think I have some­thing to of­fer. I do have the in­ter­est of the or­gan­i­sa­tion at heart. I be­lieve we can of­fer a type of pol­i­tics ... a breath of fresh air to the pop­u­la­tion. I be­lieve the na­tion is look­ing out for some kind of hope and in­spi­ra­tional change ahead of 2025.

She made it clear that she had no as­pi­ra­tion of chal­leng­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the lead­er­ship post.

“For me, at this time I would be hes­i­tant to do so be­cause per­son­al­ly, I got mar­ried at the end of last year. I am at a sea­son of my life that I do not be­lieve that at this point, I would have the time and com­mit­ment,” she said.

Haynes has worn many hats at the par­ty. In 2017, she was ap­point­ed an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor. She al­so served as UNC PRO and now MP.

Over the years, she was con­sid­ered a loy­al and ded­i­cat­ed sol­dier to the UNC. Now she feels the par­ty needs new blood and fresh faces to move for­ward.

Asked if Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ca­pa­ble of bring­ing home vic­to­ry for the par­ty in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, Haynes-Al­leyne MP said that ques­tion should be put to the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship.

“When the elec­tion is open, let us have a re­al con­test. Let us have re­al peo­ple com­ing for­ward to say this is the idea that I have to im­prove (the par­ty) and who­ev­er wins, wins. It is not an at­tack. It is not un­der­min­ing. This is a po­lit­i­cal space. And if you don’t win you con­sol­i­date and you move on.”

She said for the longest while, the UNC has avoid­ed telling its mem­bers and the pop­u­la­tion what they in­tend to do dif­fer­ent­ly to build and strength­en the par­ty’s in­ter­nal or­gans to beat the PNM.

“We can talk about the achieve­ments of the UNC but yet still that does not trans­late in­to an elec­tion vic­to­ry. In a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, you must be pre­pared to dis­cuss pub­licly how you in­tend to im­prove your or­gan­i­sa­tion and by ex­ten­sion how you in­tend to im­prove the na­tion. Those things should go to­geth­er. For me now, I think the at­mos­phere could be bet­ter. We need to pri­ori­tise pol­i­cy over pro­pa­gan­da.”

Haynes-Al­leyne said the UNC has to open its eyes, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter its 7/7 tie with the PNM in last year’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

“While in­roads would have been made in some UNC cor­po­ra­tions, the par­ty has to be very hon­est with it­self that with all the dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing the PNM the re­sults at the end of the day in 2023 were 7/7. What I saw was an in­sis­tence that we won the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion. I have nev­er made that as­ser­tion not be­cause I want to chal­lenge and chas­tise the par­ty but be­cause I want us to win in 2025.”

She said the UNC has to change the way it has been think­ing and op­er­at­ing to re­turn to pow­er.

“As it stands, we are in Op­po­si­tion. So you must be say­ing that you are of­fer­ing some­thing that will change the minds and hearts of per­sons in T&T who did not see it fit to sup­port the UNC. Every­where I go I hear peo­ple say what is the dif­fer­ence...PNM and UNC... is the same thing.”

The UNC, she said, can­not con­tin­ue to bury its head in the sand and “can do with some in­tro­spec­tion”.

Lead­ing up to her Sep­tem­ber 2023 wed­ding, Haynes-Al­leyne ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whom she looked up to as her po­lit­i­cal gu­ru and men­tor. Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not show up at the wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny but sent her apolo­gies. How­ev­er, her col­leagues at­tend­ed to make her spe­cial day mem­o­rable.

“My dad would have told me a long time ago that it is eas­i­er in life not to as­sume that some­body is do­ing some­thing to you but they are rather do­ing some­thing for them­selves.”

Un­able to say why the po­lit­i­cal leader could not make it, Haynes-Al­leyne said she did not be­lieve it was “a per­son­al slight”.