Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and sen­a­tor Anil Roberts and chair­man Dave Tan­coo have all re­mained mum on a com­plaint al­leged­ly made by Paray to the UNC about an “un­pro­voked al­ter­ca­tion” be­tween Roberts and Paray.

This af­ter an email Paray wrote to Tan­coo on Wednes­day was leaked on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day. In the email, Paray al­leges the “un­pro­voked al­ter­ca­tion” be­tween Roberts and him­self took place at the Hy­att Lime fete.

The email al­leged Roberts “... saw Paray with his fam­i­ly and was very in­sult­ing to me, my wife and my col­leagues.” It claimed Paray was “very re­spect­ful in his re­sponse and asked Roberts to re­frain from the route he was tak­ing.”

The al­leged email stat­ed Paray told Tan­coo he had been noth­ing but re­spect­ful to his col­leagues, in­clud­ing Roberts, “notwith­stand­ing the in­sults he hurled at me.”

It al­so al­leged­ly stat­ed, “How­ev­er, I would like your in­ter­ven­tion im­me­di­ate­ly to ask Sen­a­tor Roberts to de­sist from all and any com­men­tary about me. If he per­sists, I will have no choice but to re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Paray said he looked for­ward to Tan­coo’s time­ly in­ter­ven­tion in the mat­ter, as he had avoid­ed any re­sponse which could bring the par­ty in­to dis­re­pute.

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Paray stat­ed he had no com­ment. Roberts didn’t re­ply to queries on what oc­curred and the al­leged in­ci­dent. Tan­coo said, “I wasn’t there and I will nev­er use this source as au­thor­i­ta­tive.”

He de­clined to re­ply to queries on if he’d in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

An­oth­er con­stituen­cy ex­ec quits

Al­so yes­ter­day, UNC’s La Brea con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Vic­tor Roberts wrote to Tan­coo, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kan­hai, no­ti­fy­ing them of his res­ig­na­tion as chair­man and co-or­di­na­tor of La Brea unit and shad­ow coun­cil­lor for Siparia West/Fyz­abad.

But Roberts said he re­mains a UNC mem­ber.

His let­ter stat­ed his de­ci­sion arose af­ter he sent a let­ter to them on Mon­day, in which he sought a re­sponse with­in 60 hours on “mat­ters of im­por­tance.”

On Mon­day, Roberts re­port­ed­ly wrote the trio ex­press­ing con­cern over his ex­clu­sion from La Brea’s can­di­date screen­ing process, sought an ex­pla­na­tion and ques­tioned why non-UNC mem­bers were screened for can­di­da­cy.

On Tues­day, Roberts and a rel­a­tive were the on­ly mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive who didn’t at­tend a meet­ing of the ex­ec­u­tive, where the ma­jor­i­ty en­dorsed ex-union leader Clyde El­der as La Brea’s gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­da­cy.

Roberts’ res­ig­na­tion let­ter said he had not re­ceived a re­sponse on the is­sues with­in the time­frame and felt it best to “step away” from the three roles. Tan­coo didn’t com­ment on Roberts’ let­ter.

In 2021, Roberts, then a UNC ac­tivist, be­gan a five-day march through­out T&T wheel­ing a black cof­fin and call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to im­prove the health sec­tor. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had walked with him at one point. But Roberts was al­so among those at the head ta­ble at Paray’s March 22, 2024 me­dia brief­ing, where Paray launched his calls for UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tions. Lat­er, Roberts, an al­der­man with the Siparia cor­po­ra­tion, was ap­point­ed shad­ow coun­cil­lor for Siparia West/Fyz­abad in 2024, when then-UNC coun­cil­lor for that area, Ja­son Ali, filed a nom­i­na­tion with the PNM to con­test La Brea.