Gail Alexan­der and Adri­an Boodan

As the coali­tion of op­po­si­tion forces takes shape, loy­al­ists of two in­cum­bent UNC MPs–Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Vas­ant Bharath–have mount­ed protests to have them con­test their re­spec­tive seats.

And there are an­gry claims in St Au­gus­tine of a COP takeover of what is con­sid­ered a UNC safe seat. Sup­port­ers of Tabaquite MP Ma­haraj set up a tent near the UNC head­quar­ters at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, de­mand­ing that he gets the nod to con­test the seat. Both Ma­haraj and Vas­ant have been screened for their re­spec­tive seat by the UNC's screen­ing com­mit­tee that in­cludes po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

A high-rank­ing UNC of­fi­cial said last night that while no one re­al­ly chairs the screen­ing com­mit­tee, the po­lit­i­cal leader has what is called "pre­rog­a­tive." Bharath and Ma­haraj did not sup­port Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing the in­ter­nal elec­tions of the UNC in Jan­u­ary and al­so did not sign a let­ter sup­port­ing her as the Op­po­si­tion Leader af­ter she be­came the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC. In St Au­gus­tine, "No Vas­ant Bharath, no vote," was the cry of some con­stituen­cy mem­bers as word sur­faced that COP deputy leader Prakash Ra­mad­har would fight that seat in the coali­tion arrange­ment. St Au­gus­tine was award­ed to COP in the uni­ty arrange­ment that al­so in­volves UNC, NJAC, MSJ and TOP.

Un­der the arrange­ment, the UNC will con­test 23 seats, the COP 10, MSJ one, NJAC four and TOP two. Yes­ter­day's Guardian ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that COP had se­lect­ed Ra­mad­har among its ten can­di­dates on Thurs­day and had rat­i­fied the can­di­dates at a meet­ing that night. COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an was se­lect­ed for Tu­na­puna. COP's Gan­ga Singh said yes­ter­day that Ra­mad­har and Dook­er­an were the St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna can­di­dates, re­spec­tive­ly. Ra­mad­har, who lives in cen­tral Trinidad, will con­test against PNM's Dr Bose Shar­ma, who lives in the con­stituen­cy. Bharath said there were lots of unan­swered ques­tions at this time and the UNC was "play­ing catch up with the PNM with on­ly a few weeks to the polls."

There were claims that a pe­ti­tion con­tain­ing thou­sands of names of busi­ness­men, farm­ers and oth­er con­stituents has been sent to Rien­zi Com­plex de­mand­ing Bharath be cho­sen to con­test the seat. There has re­port­ed­ly not been any re­sponse. UNC's St Au­gus­tine ex­ec­u­tive yes­ter­day con­firmed that res­i­dents of Pasea and oth­er ar­eas were up­set over Bharath's planned re­place­ment and the way the mat­ter was han­dled by the UNC. The ex­ec­u­tive stat­ed res­i­dents are plan­ning a protest next Tues­day. Di­ane Bal­lah, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Oro­poune Farm­ers' Co-op­er­a­tive, said: "The in­cum­bent MP has giv­en St Au­gus­tine the best rep­re­sen­ta­tion since 1980."

Hey­man Moon­ian, of Pasea, said: "We got word Thurs­day night that Prakash Ra­mad­har was go­ing to re­place Mr Bharath. But St Au­gus­tine peo­ple don't know Ra­mad­har and won't vote COP. We be­lieve (UNC leader) Kam­la (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) sold out St Au­gus­tine at her uni­ty plat­form in Fyz­abad mar­ket." Coun­cil­lor Kadi­jah Ameen, who was screened for the seat along with Bharath, con­firmed her sup­port­ers were so up­set about the COP "takeover" that she had to call a meet­ing of the group on Wednes­day to paci­fy them. "Un­der­stand­ably, ac­tivists were re­al­ly up­set," she said. "I ad­journed the meet­ing to give them time to ab­sorb the news. Most boiled down and I was able to or­gan­ise sev­en max­is from St Au­gus­tine to at­tend tonight's Bar­rack­pore UNC meet­ing." Ameen said she was con­tact­ed by Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day to meet to im­ple­ment ma­chin­ery to work to­geth­er. She said she co-or­di­nat­ed UNC's ma­chin­ery for the 2007 elec­tion and UNC's Jan­u­ary par­ty elec­tion.

Ma­haraj sup­port­ers go to Rien­zi

In Cou­va, Ma­haraj's sup­port­ers con­verged on Rien­zi Com­plex, hold­ing plac­ards de­mand­ing that he be cho­sen to con­test the Tabaquite seat.

The group then sat un­der a tent in the near­by sa­van­nah call­ing on the ex­ec­u­tive to an­nounce their de­ci­sion for the can­di­da­cy. Clyde Be­har­ry, spokesman for the group and Ma­haraj's cam­paign man­ag­er, said Ma­haraj had done an ex­cel­lent job rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple and sees no rea­son why the par­ty should se­lect an­oth­er can­di­date such as Anand Ram­lo­gan or Ravi Rati­ram, who are al­so vy­ing for the post. He said is­sues in Tabaquite as road, drainage and crime were put on the front burn­er by Ma­haraj dur­ing his present stint as MP.

Be­har­ry was al­so quick to ad­mit that if the UNC put a "cra­paud" to fight the Tabaquite seat the par­ty would win. But not­ed that while the peo­ple of Tabaquite were sup­port­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as po­lit­i­cal leader they were not go­ing to set­tle for a "cra­paud" as their MP. Ma­haraj said he heard from his con­stituents that he was re­main­ing too silent on the is­sue of the se­lec­tion of can­di­date and not­ed that his con­stituents even threat­ened to plac­ard his own of­fice if he did not raise the is­sue. On the com­plaints, UNC deputy leader Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan said: "We'll com­plete screen­ing in a few days and peo­ple should wait un­til screen­ing is com­plet­ed to see what is the al­lo­ca­tion of seats."