Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­ber is not ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to join the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) and con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion un­der the par­ty’s ban­ner.

Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, who with­drew his can­di­da­cy for Ch­agua­nas West and sub­se­quent­ly re­signed from the UNC, said while he main­tains a good re­la­tion­ship with NTA po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith, he is not weigh­ing that op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Ram­bal­ly said his fo­cus at this time was not in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

“I re­spect that every­one wants to put for­ward them­selves and they want to see T&T be in a bet­ter place.

“At this point in time though, I re­al­ly have been tak­ing things light,” he said.

“I deem my­self an or­di­nary cit­i­zen for the past month or so and I am sim­ply spend­ing time with fam­i­ly. I haven’t made any de­ci­sions what­so­ev­er re­gard­ing pol­i­tics. What I will say though is I want to con­tin­ue in pub­lic ser­vice but how that will un­fold is some­thing that time will tell.”

Dur­ing a re­cent po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, Grif­fith said his par­ty’s door is open to for­mer UNC mem­bers.

In­cum­bent Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne kept her cards close to her chest when asked about pos­si­bly team­ing up with the NTA. While the UNC has not yet named its prospec­tive can­di­date for Tabaquite, there is spec­u­la­tion that Haynes-Al­leyne will not be se­lect­ed.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate the of­fer, I await the de­ci­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on the Tabaquite con­stituen­cy and un­til that time I am very ap­pre­cia­tive of per­sons who see our val­ue in work­ing to­wards na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” she said.

Haynes-Al­leyne and Ram­bal­ly, along with Rush­ton Paray, Dr Rai Rag­bir and Rod­ney Charles, have been la­belled by the par­ty as “dis­si­dents” fol­low­ing their crit­i­cisms of the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and their calls for in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Charles said he is un­hap­py with re­cent de­ci­sions tak­en by the par­ty’s lead­er­ship and will con­tin­ue to look on from the side­lines.

“I wish, as a pa­tri­ot and as a cit­i­zen, all par­ties, in­clud­ing the NTA, well in this gen­er­al elec­tion. They are all crit­i­cal to our democ­ra­cy and de­ter­min­ing the will of the peo­ple. I will, in good faith, give my best ad­vice to any­one or par­ty gen­uine­ly seek­ing it. Be­yond that, I pre­fer to look on from the side­lines.”

In­cum­bent Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir, who has re­signed from the UNC, said: “I have no de­ci­sion on my po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.”

In­cum­bent Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, who was not cho­sen by the par­ty as its prospec­tive can­di­date, could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.