Gail Alexan­der

An un­named po­lit­i­cal par­ty has al­ready "locked down" $5 mil­lion worth of air­time from lo­cal me­dia com­pa­nies for elec­tions and has al­so pledged $1 bil­lion for the elec­tion cam­paign to re­move the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion from of­fice, says Works Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan.Ram­bachan made the claim dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment. He did not iden­ti­fy the po­lit­i­cal par­ty to which he re­ferred, or who led it.

He, how­ev­er, be­gan and end­ed his ad­dress with crit­i­cism of for­mer col­league, Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er–now In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty leader–as well as the PNM in be­tween.On the "mys­tery" par­ty that had pledged $1 bil­lion to re­move the Gov­ern­ment, Ram­bachan added: "I re­al­ly won­der, I re­al­ly won­der...whether this mon­ey has been pledged from five Cay­man Is­lands' ac­counts of 25 firms that is owned by fam­i­ly mem­bers of this po­lit­i­cal par­ty."

PNM MPs Paula Gopee-Scoon and Ali­cia Hospedales, lis­ten­ing all agog, de­clared: "Not the PNM!...no, ab­solute­ly not the PNM!"Ram­bachan added: "(Yes) very star­tling news–$1 bil­lion pledged to re­move this Gov­ern­ment...from 25 firms where fam­i­ly mem­bers are di­rec­tors.""I won­der if all of these com­pa­nies and di­rec­tor­ships have been de­clared to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion?" he asked.

"That's why we need leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with cam­paign fi­nance re­form; some peo­ple have very, very in­ter­est­ing sub­terfuge ob­jec­tive why they get in­to pol­i­tics."Ram­bachan then point­ed to the March 3, 2012, Par­lia­ment record of for­mer works min­is­ter Warn­er's ad­dress in the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter.He said Warn­er had spo­ken about how he had re­moved him (Ram­bachan) as Ch­agua­nas may­or and that Warn­er had said PP mem­bers had an "in­vest­ment" in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ram­bachan, how­ev­er, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar couldn't be "bought, sold, trad­ed and was in­cor­rupt­ible."Maybe the Ch­agua­nas West MP is ac­cus­tomed to buy­ing and sell­ing peo­ple and maybe that was what the prob­lem was...maybe he thought he could have con­trol," he said."There was no 'ca­bal' when he act­ed as Prime Min­is­ter on five oc­ca­sions. But he's not there and sud­den­ly there's a 'ca­bal.'"

Ram­bachan al­so said Warn­er had ac­cused him of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against Fe­lic­i­ty and oth­er places re­gard­ing his min­is­te­r­i­al work.He reeled off a list of work done by his min­istry in Ch­agua­nas West, in­clud­ing 13 drainage projects worth $21 mil­lion in Beu­j­cal and paving of 34 roads in Ch­agua­nas West."This ac­cu­sa­tion is very, very, vi­cious...It's meant to turn peo­ple's minds against me, but I am a per­form­ing min­is­ter and fair to every­one," Ram­bachan said.

"I wouldn't have the Ch­agua­nas West MP cre­ate any im­age that this min­is­ter is some­one who is against any par­tic­u­lar group or area in T&T. The records are there to show."