Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Dr Fuad Khan pre­dicts that Ma­yaro con­stituents who are threat­en­ing "No Paray no vote!" will all end up sup­port­ing who­ev­er the par­ty choos­es - and Ma­yaro nom­i­nees in­clude UNC in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer Nicholas Mor­ris, who spoke on in­cum­bent Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray's plat­form in 2015.

Nom­i­nees for the seats of so-called "dis­si­dent" MPs Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne and Dr Rai Rag­bir will al­so be screened to­mor­row (Wednes­day).

Khan com­ment­ed as Ma­yaro nom­i­nees were screened by the UNC on Mon­day. Nom­i­nees were in­cum­bent MP Rush­ton Paray, Ma­yaro re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er, Don­ny Ma­habirs­ingh and Mor­ris.

Guayagua­yare-born and bred Mor­ris is a long­stand­ing UNC par­lia­men­tary re­searcher (en­er­gy/par­lia­men­tary af­fairs) and has al­so served as the Na­tion­al Youth Arm chair­man. Last year, Mor­ris led some of UNC's an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions.

Ex-MP Khan, who's not­ed Paray's re­cent meet­ings with some con­stituents who threat­ened to with­hold their votes if he is not re­turned to the seat, said, "Those con­stituents will fall in line with whoso­ev­er the par­ty picks. That 'No Paray, No Vote' cry will fiz­zle like a flat soft drink af­ter every­thing."

Khan added, "Very few - like 10 per cent - will re­main with Paray if he's not cho­sen and then they'll float back to UNC's new Ma­yaro can­di­date and say, 'Well, yuh know how it is'. I know - it hap­pened to me."

Screen­ing for Ma­yaro and oth­er seats - Cou­va North, Cou­va South, Tu­na­puna, Ca­roni/Cen­tral - which be­gan on Mon­day will be com­plet­ed lat­er, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said last Sun­day.

Rai slams Go­sine ahead of Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la screen­ing

Af­ter Mon­day's screen­ing, UNC will have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 more seats to fin­ish. These in­clude Tabaquite, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, Point Fortin, La Brea, Diego Mar­tin and the East-West cor­ri­dor.

Nom­i­nees for Tabaquite, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la and oth­ers will be screened to­mor­row. Tabaquite has six nom­i­nees, in­clud­ing cer­tain ac­tivists. Cu­mu­to nom­i­nees in­clude Sen­a­tor Damien Ly­der and a UWI lec­tur­er. For­mer Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine isn't among nom­i­nees.

Tabaquite and Cu­mu­to are held by so-called dis­si­dent MPs Haynes-Al­leyne and Rag­bir, who were among Paray's slate which un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the par­ty's 2024 in­ter­nal elec­tion against Per­sad-Bisses­sar's slate.

Rag­bir re­cent­ly said he re­fused to be screened by per­sons charged with al­leged wrong­do­ing and crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship.

On Mon­day, Rag­bir clapped back at for­mer UNC ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Neil Go­sine's view of his ac­tions as "be­tray­al."

Rag­bir said, "First­ly, my de­ci­sion to sup­port the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill was based on prin­ci­ple. Trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty should nev­er be par­ti­san is­sues, and my con­science wouldn't al­low me to op­pose leg­is­la­tion de­signed to com­bat cor­rup­tion. Mr Go­sine con­ve­nient­ly dis­miss­es my con­cerns about wrong­do­ing at the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as a 'smoke­screen' with­out of­fer­ing any coun­terev­i­dence. If the par­ty tru­ly stands against cor­rup­tion, then such con­cerns should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed—not ig­nored.

"Sec­ond­ly, Mr Go­sine frames my crit­i­cism of the UNC’s in­ter­nal struc­tures as an act of bit­ter­ness. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. I've long ad­vo­cat­ed for a UNC that em­braces open de­bate, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and the mer­it-based se­lec­tion of can­di­dates. If point­ing out these is­sues is con­sid­ered dis­loy­al­ty, then the re­al ques­tion is whether loy­al­ty is be­ing de­fined as blind obe­di­ence rather than com­mit­ment to UNC's found­ing prin­ci­ples."

Rag­bir said he was com­mit­ted to serv­ing the peo­ple with in­tegri­ty and fo­cus­ing on what is best for the coun­try, and not on what's po­lit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient.