Michelle Loubon

Oust­ed Ch­agua­nas may­or Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan says he will be close­ly ex­am­in­ing the op­tion of be­ing a UNC Par­lia­men­tar­i­an. UNC sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that Ram­bachan, thrown out of of­fice on Mon­day, may be nom­i­nat­ed to the Sen­ate when it re­sumes sit­ting again in Sep­tem­ber. At UNC's San Fran­cique meet­ing on Mon­day night, Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day dropped a broad hint as to Ram­bachan's po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion. Pan­day said, "If they don't want you (Ram­bachan) as may­or, we will make you a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an."

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, just af­ter com­plet­ing a train­ing sem­i­nar at the Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness at Mt Hope, Ram­bachan said, "My po­lit­i­cal work will not stop. It will in­ten­si­fy. More than ever there is the need for a na­tion­al front against the PNM. It is greater than ever. "De­spite my re­moval as may­or, it has noth­ing to do with man­age­ment but with the whole po­lit­i­cal erup­tion in the coun­try. "Peo­ple are jostling for po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions and ig­nor­ing the main is­sues of the coun­try." On Mon­day, Ram­bachan, 60, was not re­turned to the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion as an al­der­man.

He is ex­pect­ed to be re­placed by Natasha Navas, 30, a mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer at First Cit­i­zens Bank in Port-of-Spain. Ram­bachan had served as may­or for six years and his ouster was a move that shocked many of his em­ploy­ees and burgess­es. Ram­bachan, too, ad­mit­ted to be­ing hurt and shocked. He said UNC coun­cil­lors Fe­l­isha Isa­hack, Nals­ingh Ram­baran and Ramesh Ramd­han, along with PNM coun­cil­lors Ronald Heera and Bernard Bai­ley, were against him. Ram­bachan said Deputy May­or Or­lan­do Na­gas­sar and UNC coun­cil­lors Joey Samuel and Gopaul Bood­han re­mained loy­al and vot­ed in his favour.

He ac­cused Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er of mas­ter­mind­ing his oust­ing with the as­sis­tance of Gan­ga Singh. Putting on his ar­mour, he said, "I will con­tin­ue to work un­til the UNC is back in Gov­ern­ment." Cou­pled with his pos­si­bly new ap­point­ment, Ram­bachan vowed to keep a close eye on the ac­tiv­i­ties of the cor­po­ra­tion. "Whether I am may­or or not, I will be a watch­dog for the Cor­po­ra­tion. I in­tend to be a watch­dog. I am out of of­fice, but not out of the dri­ve to deal with those is­sues af­fect­ing Ch­agua­nas. I'll con­tin­ue to ar­tic­u­late the is­sues."

Apart from the pol­i­tics that played out, he iden­ti­fied nag­ging so­cial is­sues like es­ca­lat­ing crime, traf­fic woes and street vend­ing. Pat­ting him­self on the back, Ram­bachan said, "I held 23 sem­i­nars dur­ing my six years and I am leav­ing a strate­gic plan up to 2011, which the cor­po­ra­tion can work with for their progress. I tried to run the cor­po­ra­tion like a pri­vate en­ter­prise." If needs be, Ram­bachan said he will use the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion to en­sure "fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources."

Ram­bachan said he was con­cerned that em­ploy­ees who were part of his in­ner cir­cle might be vic­timised. Quizzed on what ad­vice he would im­part to his suc­ces­sor, he said, "I would ad­vise him to be fair, hon­est, have equal vi­sion and to act with­out fear or favour to­wards all. "Most im­por­tant­ly, don't be a po­lit­i­cal pup­pet in the hands of those who brought you to of­fice."