Gail Alexan­der

There would be a lot of peo­ple–even in the PNM– who would feel un­com­fort­able about an al­liance be­tween for­mer UNC at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley and some will have con­cerns whether a po­lit­i­cal al­liance of con­ve­nience would be best for T&T, says for­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas.

Du­mas and po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists Sel­wyn Ryan, Derek Ram­samooj and Bish­nu Ra­goonath re­spond­ed in an in­ter­view on whether Ma­haraj is a li­a­bil­i­ty to the PNM and if there should be an al­liance.On Wednes­day, House leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal speak­ing on the Ramesh-Row­ley al­liance, which he dubbed "Ram­Lee", re­mind­ed Row­ley he had dis­tanced him­self from his new best friend be­fore and had ve­he­ment­ly re­fused to talk to him, de­clar­ing he didn't trust the for­mer AG "fur­ther than he could throw him."

In May 2001 Row­ley, in a Par­lia­ment de­bate dur­ing the UNC Gov­ern­ment's tenure, said Ma­haraj had pole vault­ed on his prin­ci­ples when he re­mained in the Cab­i­net af­ter ad­vis­ing mem­bers the Pi­ar­co Air­port con­tract was null and void and he had "al­lowed them to car­ry on and rape the Trea­sury." Row­ley was lat­er told to leave the Cham­ber af­ter he failed to with­draw the re­mark.

Du­mas said: "The nor­mal re­ac­tion in pol­i­tics some­times, and in T&T, is that the en­e­my of my en­e­my is my friend. The en­e­my of Row­ley and Ramesh is Kam­la (Per­sad Bisses­sar) so they're pre­pared to work to­geth­er on what they per­ceive as a com­mon in­ter­est to get rid of Kam­la."He added: "But there's ob­vi­ous­ly an amount of po­lit­i­cal cyn­i­cism in that and not every­body in T&T sees it like that. There are still a lot of peo­ple who hold on to prin­ci­ples and prop­er be­hav­iour. So there would be a lot of peo­ple even in PNM who would feel un­com­fort­able with the sit­u­a­tion."

"Yes, they may want to get rid of Kam­la and bring the PP to heel, but they may not be sure that a Row­ley- Ramesh al­liance with­in the Round­table is nec­es­sar­i­ly the best way to go. They may not be sure what that al­liance to bring the PP down could lead to, and if that would tru­ly be in T&T's best in­ter­ests.""Al­so in mak­ing an al­liance of con­ve­nience, what mes­sage does this send to so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly the youths, about ethics? That you will do any­thing to get in­to pow­er? What mes­sage does it send about your­self as well as how you would run T&T?"

He added: "So the PNM has to be vig­i­lant on how the un­com­mit­ted pub­lic will see this al­liance be­cause a lot of peo­ple un­hap­py with the gov­ern­ment will not jump to em­brace an al­liance be­tween Row­ley and Ramesh."Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Ram­samooj said the Round­table is more about a po­si­tion of pow­er than about trans­for­ma­tion of T&T's po­lit­i­cal cul­ture or re­al change.

He said: "The ques­tion of Ma­haraj be­ing a li­a­bil­i­ty or as­set to the PNM at this point is some­what pre­ma­ture. The fun­da­men­tal is­sues con­fronting so­ci­ety is that of choic­es of po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship, gov­er­nance style and pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tives to the Gov­ern­ment. Clear­ly T&T is in search of a lead­er­ship that can man­age the in­ter­nal af­fairs and im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens on the fronts of law and se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic man­age­ment to res­tim­u­late the econ­o­my and im­ple­ment­ing a so­cial agen­da ad­dress­ing pover­ty."

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Bish­nu Ra­goonath said he could not make the call about Ma­haraj be­ing a li­a­bil­i­ty or not."What I can say is the com­ments made by the PNM leader about not trust­ing Ma­haraj is and will be a con­cern for many PN­Mites. The chal­lenge though is they may see Ma­haraj as an al­ly help­ing un­der­mine the PP Gov­ern­ment, so they may well see the sit­u­a­tion even­ly bal­anced," he said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Ryan said the Round­table on which Row­ley and Ma­haraj ap­peared was on­ly to dis­cuss na­tion­al mat­ters and he saw no rea­son why Ma­haraj would be a li­a­bil­i­ty to the PNM as he wasn't join­ing the PNM. He said he didn't see why PN­Mites would be up­set by Ma­haraj's con­tri­bu­tion.Ryan thought Ma­haraj's ad­dress at the re­cent St James meet­ing was well fo­cused and com­pli­ment­ed him on it, though Ryan said he didn't agree with every­thing.