DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots, the slate chal­leng­ing the Star Team in the UNC’s na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions on June 15, has dis­tanced it­self from a smear cam­paign that is be­ing waged on so­cial me­dia.

Fin­gers had been point­ed at the Rush­ton Paray-led slate af­ter videos and memes crit­i­cal of the two teams con­test­ing the in­ter­nal polls be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing.

In one case, a cam­paign video was wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed, pur­port­ed­ly from the Star Team, lit­tered with phras­es, some of which were defam­a­to­ry.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath, the Star Team’s can­di­date for par­ty or­gan­is­er, said it was clear the at­tacks were com­ing from their op­po­nents.

“One has to be fool­ish to think that it is not as­so­ci­at­ed in any way with our de­trac­tors in terms of the per­sons who are go­ing up against us on an­oth­er slate,” he said.

“But, as I said, we are very fo­cused in terms of what our mis­sion is. So, I don’t think that we are very par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about that but it’s a sad state of af­fairs for the oth­er side to be par­rot­ing the nar­ra­tive of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (UNC) for a UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion.”

Paray, how­ev­er, de­nied any in­volve­ment in mud­sling­ing and point­ed out that he had al­so been the vic­tim of a smear cam­paign.He said he had been ac­cused of be­ing linked to the rul­ing PNM by his par­ty leader and his wife and chil­dren have suf­fered “se­vere” at­tacks per­pe­trat­ed by an un­named in­di­vid­ual.

He main­tained that he would not ac­cuse his col­leagues of be­ing re­spon­si­ble and re­it­er­at­ed that his slate is run­ning a clean elec­tion cam­paign.

“This elec­tion in­ter­nal­ly has brought out a lot of pas­sion with­in dif­fer­ent arms of the par­ty as well but I can tell you that from where I sit there have been no in­struc­tions what­so­ev­er and I can tell you no ac­tions on the part of any­body on my team to bring any of my col­leagues in­to dis­re­pute,” Paray said.

“I’m sad­dened by what I saw as well but I can cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly say that we have a par­ty to run on the 16th. We have a Par­lia­ment to run on the 16th and at­tack­ing my col­leagues doesn’t add any val­ue to me.

“We have noth­ing to do with that and I’m re­al­ly sad­dened that they feel that we would have any­thing to do with that be­cause it has not been our MO from day one.”