Richard Lord

Leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day called on his Cab­i­net col­league Tourism Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma to re­sign.If Shar­ma does not re­sign Ra­mad­har said, then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar should fire him pend­ing com­ple­tion of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­le­ga­tions of as­sault on his for­mer girl­friend Sacha Singh, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of AMS Biotech Se­cu­ri­ty Con­cept and AM­Sure T&t Ltd.

Singh re­port­ed the in­ci­dent, which al­leged­ly took place at Grand Bazaar on March 12, to St Joseph po­lice last Fri­day.The Prime Min­is­ter was asked to com­ment on the mat­ter but did not re­spond as she en­tered her car af­ter at­tend­ing Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions at Mal­oney.In a state­ment is­sued af­ter the cel­e­bra­tions, Ra­mad­har said he was great­ly dis­ap­point­ed af­ter read­ing the news­pa­per re­ports on the al­leged "se­ri­ous mis­con­duct" by the Tourism Min­is­ter.

He said his par­ty, which is the sec­ond largest mem­ber of the four-par­ty coali­tion led by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, hopes the al­le­ga­tions are false.Ra­mad­har said his par­ty main­tains its po­si­tion that "where se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions are made against se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials, such per­sons should re­move them­selves from of­fice un­til the al­le­ga­tions are prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and re­solved."There­fore, Ra­mad­har said the COP "calls on Min­is­ter Shar­ma to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion from the Cab­i­net un­til his name is cleared."

Fail­ing Shar­ma's res­ig­na­tion, "the COP ex­pects that the Prime Min­is­ter will move with alacrity, as she has done in the past, to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of her ad­min­is­tra­tion and of the in­sti­tu­tions of state."

PNM re­sponds

Pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, said all eyes were on Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the wake of the lat­est se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct by a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.Al-Rawi, in a brief com­ment to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, not­ed that it came days af­ter Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh was fired over al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct in­volv­ing an em­ploy­ee of Caribbean Air­lines on a flight home from To­ba­go.

Al-Rawi said the tem­po of such al­le­ga­tions seem to have quick­ened to a madding pace.He said the PNM now awaits the PM's re­sponse on the in­ci­dent."We await sight of her com­mit­ment to im­me­di­a­cy of ac­tion in re­la­tion to this most re­cent scan­dal," he added.The PM has re­mained deaf­en­ing­ly silent on oth­er is­sues in­volv­ing her gov­ern­ment, in par­tic­u­lar the award of a bil­lion-dol­lar con­tract to Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) to con­struct a waste­water treat­ment plant at Beetham.

Al-Rawi said he was hope­ful that the al­le­ga­tions against Shar­ma "will not fall in­to the very long vac­u­um of her con­sid­er­a­tions."But he said, "We await fur­ther fee­ble at­tempts by the Gov­ern­ment to try and lay dis­trac­tion to the de­com­po­si­tion of the rot­ting corpse of the UNC."

What Warn­er said

And for­mer Cab­i­net min­is­ter Jack warn­er says the lat­est al­le­ga­tion against Shar­ma is on­ly the tip of the ice­berg.Warn­er said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should be con­sis­tent and tell Shar­ma "thanks very much" and fire him.He said the PM should dis­tance her­self and her PP Gov­ern­ment from Shar­ma as he had not done any­thing for the Gov­ern­ment in the past four years.Shar­ma did not re­spond to calls from the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.