Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate leader Rush­ton Paray has sig­nalled that he will have an open-door pol­i­cy to peo­ple, par­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tions in­ter­est­ed in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment if his team wins Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ up­com­ing na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion.

“The UNC must al­ways be a home to every cit­i­zen in T&T—all must be wel­comed,” Paray added yes­ter­day.

And UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo, of the Stars in­cum­bent slate in the par­ty elec­tion, has al­so said the par­ty has open­ly pur­sued na­tion­al uni­ty,

“... And we will con­tin­ue to do so with any and every­one who shares UNC’s mis­sion, poli­cies and plans,” he said.

Paray and Tan­coo both spoke yes­ter­day af­ter Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith said in a news­pa­per re­port that if the UNC did not want to form a prop­er al­liance with his par­ty to con­test the next gen­er­al elec­tion, it would fight both UNC and PNM in all 41 con­stituen­cies.

Grif­fith said he had “no idea of the UNC’s po­si­tion on an al­liance with NTA and the UNC’s leader hadn’t spo­ken to him for the last three months or com­mu­ni­cat­ed with him on any form of al­liance”. He claimed some UNC Na­tex mem­bers felt the par­ty could win elec­tions on its own.

Not­ing UNC’s June 15 Na­tex elec­tions, Grif­fith said he hoped who­ev­er wins the in­ter­nals would un­der­stand the UNC had on­ly ever won an elec­tion on its own in 2000 and he hoped they’d do what is right “to get in­to Gov­ern­ment”.

At a meet­ing in St Joseph last month, Grif­fith, al­lud­ing to the NTA’s “bridge” role, de­clared, “To those who ask what we bring to the ta­ble, is: with­out us, you all can­not win!”

Yes­ter­day, Paray replied to the T&T Guardian on if he sup­ports an al­liance with Grif­fith’s NTA and if a Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots-led Na­tex would of­fi­cial­ly ce­ment this.

He said, “All re­la­tion­ships are im­por­tant in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. The PNM has de­stroyed the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety, where they haven’t been able to pro­vide sim­ple things that mat­ter to cit­i­zens—from wa­ter to school re­pairs. How will they solve ma­jor na­tion­al is­sues like crime sup­pres­sion/re­duc­tion, bal­ance of trade, for­eign ex­change, job­less­ness, home­less­ness?”

He added, “Un­less there are calls from our wider mem­ber­ship ad­vis­ing a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, a Na­tex dri­ven by the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate will wel­come di­a­logue by any per­sons or or­gan­i­sa­tions in­ter­est­ed in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. The UNC must al­ways be a home to every cit­i­zen in T&T. All must be wel­comed.”

Paray was al­so asked if the open door/wel­come ap­proach would ap­ply to par­ties like Mick­ela Pan­day’s Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, Philip Alexan­der’s Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) and Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith’s HOPE.

Paray replied, “All means all.”

Mean­while, UNC chair­man Tan­coo, main­tain­ing that the ex­ec­u­tive and the en­ti­ty as a par­ty had open­ly pur­sued na­tion­al uni­ty, said, “The lat­est court rul­ing against PDVSA, the abysmal state of the econ­o­my, the crime ‘tsuna­mi’, wa­ter short­ages and mul­ti­tude of oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing from peo­ple from home to school and busi­ness all make the PNM des­per­ate to have dis­trac­tions from this.

“Rest as­sured the UNC’s fo­cused and will con­tin­ue chal­leng­ing the Gov­ern­ment to high­light their fail­ure and em­pha­sise our plans for a bet­ter Trin­ba­go.”

Re­gard­ing to­day’s dead­line for the with­draw­al of can­di­dates from the Na­tex elec­tion, Tan­coo said, “There’s a full Star slate which re­mains com­mit­ted and res­olute to work­ing with our po­lit­i­cal leader to en­sure we res­cue our coun­try from this de­struc­tive cor­rupt Gov­ern­ment.”

On Mon­day, UNC’s Elec­tion man­age­ment team will an­nounce valid­ly nom­i­nat­ed can­di­dates for the elec­tion and a list for the June 12 spe­cial vot­ers, and the fi­nal vot­ers’ list for each con­stituen­cy will be post­ed. Fi­nal re­sults will be an­nounced June 21.

Alexan­der: PEP may pull out

of 2025 race

Via a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der sig­nalled the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his par­ty may not con­test the next gen­er­al elec­tion, not­ing that no oth­er small par­ty “is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the next elec­tion - none”!

“HOPE hope­less—99 per cent of the peo­ple read­ing this don’t even know it ex­ists. NTA nev­er was, COP dead since be­fore (Car­olyn) Seep­er­sad-Bachan. Bas ‘Front’ par­ty was dead when he was alive. Now he dead, it prop­er­ly dead. But ex­pect them all to make a mess,” Alexan­der said.

“That’s why we in the PEP have de­cid­ed we will most like­ly not take any part in the next elec­tion. With all that mess, all that will hap­pen is PNM will win and with votes frac­tured in­to bits—prob­a­bly the biggest vic­to­ry they have ever had.”

Alexan­der added, “Un­less all se­ri­ous forces op­posed to the PNM unite (in­clud­ing all fac­tions of the UNC) any oth­er per­mu­ta­tion would be a com­plete waste of time, ef­fort and mon­ey...”