Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Sura­jrat­tan Ram­bachan says it is too ear­ly for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to make a pro­nounce­ment or take ac­tion on al­le­ga­tions of do­mes­tic abuse lev­elled against Tourism Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma by his ex-girl­friend Sacha Singh.But Ram­bachan ex­pressed con­fi­dence that Per­sad-Bisses­sar will deal with the mat­ter.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Guardian, Ram­bachan said, "I think it is too ear­ly for any­one to make any pro­nounce­ments on this mat­ter. I think that these are mat­ters the Prime Min­is­ter will, in time, deal with. This is a mat­ter that is un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion and there­fore it is in­ap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment," Ram­bachan added.Yes­ter­day the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that Shar­ma is cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in which he is ac­cused of be­ing phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive to his ex-girl­friend, a Pi­ar­co busi­ness­woman.

Singh, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of AMS Biotech Se­cu­ri­ty Con­cept and Am­Sure T&T Ltd, re­port­ed to po­lice that she was struck by the min­is­ter, pushed to the ground and blacked out.The al­leged in­ci­dent took place dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion on March 12 in­volv­ing the two, an­oth­er woman and a 12-year-old child, at Grand Bazaar.Yes­ter­day Ram­bachan said he on­ly knew about it when he read the news­pa­per ar­ti­cle.

"I have not been aware. I am on­ly go­ing by what I read in the pa­pers, and not every­thing you see in the pa­pers you must just ac­cept. There are al­ways two sides to every sto­ry, as you would know," he said.This al­le­ga­tion comes a week af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh from the Cab­i­net.

The Ca­roni Cen­tral MP was axed af­ter me­dia re­ports that he en­gaged in dis­or­der­ly con­duct aboard a Caribbean Air­lines do­mes­tic flight last Sun­day. The for­mer min­is­ter, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, al­leged­ly touched a flight at­ten­dant 25-year-old Ronelle Laid­low's breast when he reached for her ID badge. He is al­so al­leged to have threat­ened to have her dis­missed.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said he has full con­fi­dence in Per­sad-Bisses­sar's judge­ment and came out in her de­fence as he dis­missed crit­ics who have ques­tioned her judge­ment in the se­lec­tion of min­is­ters for her Cab­i­net. She has dis­missed 11 in the past four years."I think the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to ex­er­cise her best judge­ment in all these mat­ters. I ful­ly sup­port her. As I said, you elect peo­ple to of­fice and you give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty and you ex­pect them to per­form to the best of their abil­i­ty," he said.

The min­is­ter said since day one the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has been un­der at­tack.Yet, he said, "de­spite the many at­tacks we have been able to con­tin­ue our good work in the coun­try of de­liv­er­ing the goods and ser­vices, de­liv­er­ing good in­fra­struc­ture, of grow­ing the econ­o­my, of re­duc­ing un­em­ploy­ment and main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty in the na­tion."On Sat­ur­day Ram­bachan al­so came to the Prime Min­is­ter's de­fence, de­clar­ing that she could not be blamed for the short­com­ings of her min­is­ters.

Ram­bachan, speak­ing with re­porters as he joined par­ents and pupils of the Macaulay Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School at the start of their an­ti-bul­ly­ing walkathon, said the Prime Min­is­ter stood up for in­tegri­ty.He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar could not be blamed for the mis­takes her min­is­ters made which even­tu­al­ly led to their dis­missals.

"She has to work with those who have come and pre­sent­ed them­selves for pub­lic of­fice... Now if you, hav­ing been giv­en that op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve, do not make good use of it, then you do not hold the Prime Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for it. You hold your­self re­spon­si­ble," Ram­bachan said.Ram­bachan said while it was re­gret­table that a "good min­is­ter" like Ra­mad­hars­ingh was fired, the Prime Min­is­ter had made the right choice.

Ju­nior min­is­ter in the Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­istry Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine al­so shared this view on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon while speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing a med­ical clin­ic in her Oropouche West con­stituen­cy at the Her­itage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, La Ro­main.Roop­nar­ine said the Prime Min­is­ter has her full sup­port.