Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

At­tor­ney Rekha Ramjit has been elect­ed as the new po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP).

The par­ty held elec­tions yes­ter­day, with sev­en polling sta­tions across T&T, to se­lect a new leader fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of par­ty founder Jack Warn­er last month.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to chair­man of the par­ty's elec­tions com­mit­tee, Amar­nath Jages­sar, yes­ter­day, af­ter the bal­lots were count­ed.

Rekha Ramjit got 262 votes and her op­po­nent, Sime­on Ma­habir, got 85 votes, said Jages­sar.

Short­ly be­fore 6 pm yes­ter­day, Jages­sar said the par­ty's Ch­agua­nas of­fice was qui­et and there were no cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place.

"We are not hav­ing any­thing in Ch­agua­nas, I don't know if she is hav­ing any­thing any­where else."

Ear­li­er in the day, when Ramjit vis­it­ed the San Fer­nan­do polling sta­tion to cast her vote, she told re­porters she ex­pect­ed about 2,000 peo­ple to turn out for the elec­tions.

"Turnout for in­ter­nal elec­tions are al­ways ex­treme­ly low. If we get about 2,000 we will be very hap­py hav­ing re­gard to the fact that just 6,000 peo­ple vot­ed for the ILP in the last elec­tion," Ramjit said. "The reg­is­tered list is 37,000 but ob­vi­ous­ly all our mem­bers did not vote."

She al­so out­lined the fu­ture of the par­ty, which failed to cap­ture any seats in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed gen­er­al elec­tion.

"We are wait­ing for this event (elec­tion) to be over so that we could start to build on what­ev­er foun­da­tion we have for the ILP be­cause we know that lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions are due next year, so we want to get in prepa­ra­tion mode for that."

Warn­er al­so vis­it­ed all the polling sta­tions yes­ter­day, speak­ing to jour­nal­ists briefly in San Fer­nan­do, to say that the vot­ing process was go­ing well.

Par­ty's gen­er­al sec­re­tary re­signs

Mean­while, the par­ty's gen­er­al sec­re­tary In­dra Maraj ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day.

In her let­ter ad­dressed to Jack Warn­er, she ex­pressed her grat­i­tude to him for dis­play­ing con­fi­dence in her over the last two years and since 2006.

In a brief state­ment, Maraj said she was proud that the par­ty con­tin­ued to share "our mis­sion to break the mould of par­ti­san in­ter­ests with an elec­torate which re­gret­ful­ly votes along racial lines."