In­cum­bent UNC Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath is re­turn­ing home a lit­tle lat­er this week than ini­tial­ly planned—and he isn’t wor­ried about fall­out from re­cent gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date se­lec­tion since he says the par­ty has ma­tured.

“The ob­jec­tive now is all hands on deck,” Padarath said yes­ter­day.

Padarath’s been in Mi­a­mi since March when T&T’s bor­ders closed due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Last Sun­day, the par­ty an­nounced he will con­test the Princes Town seat again. He was one of eight of the 18 in­cum­bents who were re­tained. Ten oth­er in­cum­bents were re­placed—the ma­jor­i­ty of those were asked to step down. There has been some shock and sad­ness in sev­er­al ar­eas which out­go­ing in­cum­bents had rep­re­sent­ed. But those MPs haven’t com­plained and con­tin­ue to sup­port the par­ty.

UNC deputy leader David Lee didn’t an­swer calls on the is­sue yes­ter­day.

But Padarath said the ap­proach by the MPs was a sign that the par­ty is ma­tur­ing. He not­ed that in years be­fore among par­ties, can­di­date se­lec­tion of­ten caused some anger. He said the MPs now un­der­stood that every­one has a role to play.

“... Once we form gov­ern­ment—there can on­ly be 39 can­di­dates and they all agreed to work to­wards the in­ter­est of form­ing the next gov­ern­ment,” Padarath said.

Padarath had ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed re­turn­ing home to­mor­row but said he’d changed his arrange­ments and will now re­turn home lat­er in the week. He said the change was due to the fact that he’d been booked on a char­ter flight but the per­son run­ning the char­ter didn’t re­alise pas­sen­gers had to have ex­emp­tions to re­turn home be­fore they could leave where they were.

“So I’m now get­ting to An­tigua and from there get­ting a char­tered flight home,” he added.

Padarath said he’ll en­ter quar­an­tine for 14 days when he re­turns. On his pres­ence for the Ju­ly 17 Nom­i­na­tion Day ex­er­cise, he said he’s spo­ken to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion and was as­sured his elec­tion agent can han­dle all pro­ce­dures for him.

“In any event, I was the last can­di­date cho­sen in 2015. This time I’ll have more time to cam­paign,” he said.

He said he plans to bring his in­fant daugh­ter home with him but he’s con­sult­ing her pae­di­a­tri­cian first.

Mean­while, re-se­lect­ed Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day said that ru­mours of a “cuss-out” be­tween him and UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at last Sat­ur­day’s meet­ing (with in­cum­bents) was com­plete­ly false and bizarre.

“I’m grate­ful to the leader and screen­ing team for ex­press­ing a vote of con­fi­dence in me to con­tin­ue the jour­ney of rep­re­sent­ing Oropouche East,” Mooni­lal said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing he’s among the most se­nior and ex­pe­ri­enced MPs on the team now, Mooni­lal said, “I look for­ward to work­ing with the new MPs and trans­fer­ring knowl­edge I’ve ac­quired over the years to the new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers.”

He al­so brushed off claims of an im­pend­ing po­lice mat­ter sur­round­ing the re­cent protests in Port-of-Spain.