Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate leader Rush­ton Paray says Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said “noth­ing of sub­stance” about his slate to re­spond to.

And Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) leader Mick­ela Pan­day says she’s had no talks with Paray on his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

Their com­ments came yes­ter­day af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day slammed Paray’s slate, which is con­test­ing the UNC’s June 15 na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions against the Star slate which she sup­ports. Speak­ing at the Stars’ launch in Cou­va, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ver­bal­ly shred­ded the pro­file of Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots and ques­tioned its name. She al­so raised Pan­day’s Pa­tri­ot­ic Front par­ty and the “co­in­ci­dence” of the “pa­tri­ot” theme in the names of both af­ter the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s re­peat­ed ac­cu­sa­tions of the UNC as be­ing “un­pa­tri­ot­ic”.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she’d “found it alarm­ing that they opt­ed to call their team ‘Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots’, giv­en that there’s an­oth­er fledg­ling po­lit­i­cal par­ty named ‘Pa­tri­ot­ic Front’. Is it that it is the same PNM-fi­nanced pro­pa­gan­da team that is be­hind all these ‘pa­tri­ot­ic’ groups seek­ing to desta­bilise the UNC?”

Ques­tions about Paray’s team and a pos­si­ble al­liance with PF were al­so raised in the pub­lic do­main, af­ter Paray launched UP last Sat­ur­day, the same day as for­mer UNC founder Bas­deo Pan­day’s birth­day—and the same day Mick­ela Pan­day, at her own func­tion, an­nounced her par­ty would con­test all seats in the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Asked his view on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments yes­ter­day, Paray said, “There was noth­ing of sub­stance, so noth­ing to re­spond to. The Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots re­main fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing to the mem­ber­ship of the UNC a brighter fu­ture for all.”

Mean­while, Mick­ela Pan­day, via a so­cial me­dia post, stat­ed, “I have had no dis­cus­sion with Mr Rush­ton Paray con­cern­ing his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture. I main­tain that I don’t in­ter­fere in the in­ter­nal pol­i­tics of oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties. The fact that per­sons have de­cid­ed to name their slate draw­ing po­lit­i­cal in­spi­ra­tion from my po­lit­i­cal par­ty does not in­di­cate that I have so­licit­ed or coun­selled their ac­tions.”

How­ev­er, she said her par­ty is will­ing to lis­ten to all who have ideas on build­ing a bet­ter fu­ture for all the peo­ple and her fo­cus is on so­lu­tions to prob­lems fac­ing T&T, adding she will not be “dis­tract­ed by half-truths, lies and in­nu­en­dos”.

An­a­lysts weigh in

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath yes­ter­day said the fact that the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front wants to con­test all seats sug­gests Mick­ela Pan­day had some agen­da planned to take her for­ward.

He not­ed that form­ing an ac­com­mo­da­tion with the UNC may not be her mis­sion at this point.

He said if Pan­day bol­sters her base and caus­es in­sta­bil­i­ty in the UNC—and with Paray’s ac­tions—it will di­vide Op­po­si­tion votes in the gen­er­al elec­tion, en­sur­ing the PNM re­mains dom­i­nant.

“Af­ter her par­ty ex­ist­ed for five years and noth­ing’s been done, I feel she’s hold­ing on to the be­lief that she’ll have some de­gree of her fa­ther’s lega­cy car­ry­ing her for­ward. But the wave of sym­pa­thy that ex­ist­ed dur­ing Mr Pan­day’s death hasn’t con­tin­ued and won’t give her the re­quired bounce she’d have been ex­pect­ing,” Ra­goonath said.

“There’s a cred­i­bil­i­ty gap that has to be filled, since in 2020 she in­di­cat­ed she’d con­test elec­tions but with­drew be­fore. So her par­ty hasn’t par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tions since for­ma­tion, yet now is say­ing it will con­test 41 seats.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed said it was strange and un­char­ac­ter­is­tic that Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t stay out of the Na­tex elec­tion as she did in 2012. He feels it is un­eth­i­cal for her to get in­volved when she’s not con­test­ing a post—giv­ing the Stars an un­fair ad­van­tage—and for fair­ness and eq­ui­ty should have stayed out and fo­cused on the two by-elec­tions.

Mo­hammed ac­knowl­edged there’s a high con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry lev­el about pos­si­ble al­liances be­tween Paray and the PF. Mo­hammed said this fol­lowed ut­ter­ances from Paray’s team.

“If so, that’s very un­for­tu­nate they’d con­test an in­ter­nal and have a con­tin­gency plan if they lost where the first or­der of busi­ness would be to jump ship and pledge al­le­giance to an­oth­er par­ty,” Mo­hammed added.

Not­ing Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne’s state­ment that if they lost she’d re-en­gi­neer her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, Mo­hammed said that’s an in­di­rect way of say­ing she’d seek an al­ter­na­tive.

He said every­one was fo­cus­ing on pow­er but both slates should un­der­stand it’s the last op­por­tu­ni­ty for the UNC to get its house in or­der to en­gen­der pub­lic trust and they had to put peo­ple first - not them­selves.