Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir was among those who at­tend­ed the meet­ing held by dis­si­dent MPs at the San Fer­nan­do Yacht Club on Mon­day.

Rag­bir sup­ports MP Rush­ton Paray’s call for na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions and al­so wants UNC lead­er­ship elec­tions.

Paray told Mon­day’s gath­er­ing he was guid­ed to speak about him­self. Paray de­tailed how his Na­tex call arose—con­cerns were raised about non-func­tion­ing par­ty or­gans, out­reach to oth­er con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives, and the same con­sen­sus; peo­ple from all over call­ing him to say they felt dis­con­nect­ed from the lead­er­ship.

He added that in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, af­ter 20 or 25 meet­ings—three times a night—he con­tact­ed leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to say that all was not well. He al­leged he got one-word re­spons­es and a smi­ley face emo­ji. In ear­ly March, when his meet­ings con­tin­ued and “voic­es be­came a lit­tle stronger,” he wrote a for­mal cor­re­spon­dence and, a week lat­er, got a re­sponse to meet in Par­lia­ment.

Paray said that did not oc­cur since Per­sad-Bisses­sar had to sup­port a mo­tion MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne was mak­ing and Paray had to re­turn to Ma­yaro ear­ly. He sug­gest­ed he had de­tailed the sit­u­a­tion in a re­port and sent it to her, which was agreed up­on, but he nev­er got a re­sponse.

He said he sus­pect­ed it was be­cause he want­ed to ad­dress UNC con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues and re­form.

Paray claimed half of UNC MPs felt like him, as he had con­ver­sa­tions with them.

He added, “Dr Row­ley and PNM don’t know how to run gov­ern­ment, but they know how to win gov­ern­ment. We have a prob­lem stay­ing in gov­ern­ment as we con­tin­ue to col­lapse our par­ty struc­tures.”

MP Rod­ney Charles said he sup­port­ed seam­less gen­er­a­tional change in T&T’s pol­i­tics. Not­ing he will be 77 when the gen­er­al elec­tion is called, he ques­tioned why peo­ple 72, 74, and 75 would strug­gle to hold on to pow­er and stay in pol­i­tics to “hold back the next gen­er­a­tion”.

He said when his fa­ther was el­der­ly, he took away his car keys for his safe­ty, and his fa­ther protest­ed. Charles said if “we reach the stage where we say to Kei­th Row­ley, my­self, and oth­ers in my age group that the time has come to pass the ba­ton on,” it would not be that they do not love them but be­cause it is the right thing to do.

Haynes-Al­leyne said the gen­er­a­tional change in lead­er­ship was for a T&T “where we can thrive—we’re in sur­vivor mode now”.

She said those in the land­scape must recog­nise the sit­u­a­tion and ask what they are do­ing dif­fer­ent­ly to fix the po­lit­i­cal prod­uct, but the re­ac­tion to Paray’s Na­tex call was a shock.

Haynes-Al­leyne ques­tioned whether one was in­ter­est­ed in de­vel­op­ment and change but was not in­ter­est­ed in what it takes to fa­cil­i­tate change. She said UNC can agree to move PNM, but those in UNC must de­cide what it is pre­sent­ing, as peo­ple have no pa­tience for rhetoric and pro­pa­gan­da when the 2025 elec­tion ar­rives.

She said when she looks at whom she sits among, her job is to as­sist in fix­ing the ve­hi­cle that will dri­ve change, but if peo­ple choose to at­tack rather than find so­lu­tions, “we’re fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems.”