Clevon Raphael

?Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is al­ready see­ing her­self as the next Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Jack Warn­er is view­ing him­self as the coun­try's next Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and in­cum­bent mem­ber for Tabaquite, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, says fur­ther that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready cho­sen her Cab­i­net, and some of the MPs who sup­port­ed her for Op­po­si­tion Leader are not in the line-up.

Q: Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj, are you on the Kam­la-for-Prime-Min­is­ter ex­press?

A (In his San Fer­nan­do cham­bers on Wednes­day morn­ing): I am on the UNC for gov­ern­ment, and who­ev­er the UNC and the elec­torate wish to sup­port I would be on that ex­press.

Don't tell me you haven't heard of "Kam­la­ma­nia"?

(Sto­ical ex­pres­sion) I have heard about so many ma­nias, some of which are very short-lived. Kam­la has sup­port, but she has to prove her lead­er­ship in what is a short space of time in terms of the next gen­er­al elec­tion, and I wish her the best.

?How is she go­ing so far?

Well (sigh­ing),...how to put this...? I made a state­ment af­ter our in­ter­nal elec­tion sup­port­ing the new ex­ec­u­tive, and I in­di­cat­ed to her that if she did not man­age the tran­si­tion of change prop­er­ly it could cause more di­vi­sion in the par­ty.

How is she man­ag­ing at this time?

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it has not gone well, in that the Chief Whip was ap­point­ed with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the par­lia­men­tary team. Since I have been in the Par­lia­ment, dis­cus­sions have al­ways tak­en place on this mat­ter, be­cause that post has a se­ri­ous im­pact on the per­for­mance of the Op­po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment. Con­sul­ta­tion is an im­por­tant in­gre­di­ent in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. And you know, Clevon, I don't know if you have no­ticed, but cer­tain MPs are be­ing tar­get­ed...They are not be­ing con­sult­ed.

Tar­get­ed... Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj; sounds omi­nous, and by whom?

As a mat­ter of fact, Mr Warn­er has said that all who lost the elec­tion must go, and he has an­nounced....

Go where...?

And what he has done is that at the first pub­lic meet­ing in Cou­va North, he said Pan­day must go, and the same thing he said to the MPs for Cou­va South, and my con­stituen­cy in Tabaquite. Even though I was not wel­comed when they held the meet­ing in my con­stituen­cy last Mon­day, I fa­cil­i­tat­ed the meet­ing be­ing held there.

What do you mean by that?

They said I was in­vit­ed, but I can­not talk. I could on­ly be a spec­ta­tor and that on­ly Jack and Kam­la would be al­lowed to speak.

Are you telling the ab­solute truth, Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj, that you were in­vit­ed, but couldn't speak in your con­stituen­cy?

I am sur­prised that this mag­net for uni­ty that was bandied about is not hap­pen­ing. The UNC elec­tors went for that be­cause the peo­ple want uni­ty of the op­po­si­tion par­ties, be­cause that is the on­ly way you can ef­fec­tive­ly re­move the PNM from of­fice. And you can­not have uni­ty among those par­ties if you don't have uni­ty in the UNC. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, what hap­pened af­ter the in­ter­nal elec­tion was the pro­mo­tion of dis­uni­ty with­in the UNC.

How was this man­i­fest­ed?

Be­cause those who con­test­ed against Kam­la and against Jack, ei­ther you fall in line, sign a let­ter, or you have to go. I thought there would have been a bury­ing of those dif­fer­ences, hold a meet­ing among all of us and de­sign a plan where every­body would be in­volved.

Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj, have you heard the grapevine say­ing that you con­ve­nient­ly ab­sent­ed your­self from last Fri­day's sit­ting of the Low­er House, where the Op­po­si­tion mo­tion failed be­cause of the re­fusal of Messrs Pan­day and Ram­nath to sup­port the pro­posed de­bate?

I do not con­ve­nient­ly ab­sent my­self from Par­lia­ment, and while I am not blam­ing any­one for not telling me about the pro­posed mo­tion, I wasn't aware of what was to take place. And as one who has led the fight against cor­rup­tion, why would any­one ex­pect me do such a thing like de­lib­er­ate­ly ab­sent­ing my from sup­port­ing such a de­bate?

Mr Pan­day said he was not in­formed, hence the rea­son why he did not stand in sup­port of the mo­tion. Do you buy in­to that?

Clevon, I re­al­ly don't want to get in­to that. There is enough frag­men­ta­tion with­in the UNC for me to get in­to that....to get in­to what Mr Pan­day would have said and what he would have thought. Let him an­swer that. What I be­lieve, how­ev­er, if I were in the Par­lia­ment I would have called on every mem­ber–in­clud­ing the gov­ern­ment mem­bers–to stand up and show their com­mit­ment to fight­ing cor­rup­tion.

Shouldn't one view that as Gov­ern­ment's luke­warm com­mit­ment to fight­ing of­fi­cial cor­rup­tion?

Well (an­oth­er heavy sigh), I formed that view two years ago, when I start­ed to voice my con­cerns about the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott, at which time I called for the re­moval of the board, the fir­ing of Calder Hart. I have called for the res­ig­na­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, the res­ig­na­tion of the Cab­i­net.

Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj, you forced Mr Man­ning to ap­point the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor. Are you get­ting the kind of cred­it you might feel you de­serve for that ac­tion, which has re­sult­ed in the dra­mat­ic events now tak­ing place?

I don't ex­pect cred­it for that. I took a stand in 2001, and I must con­fess the ev­i­dence I pro­duced to the Par­lia­ment in 2007 was suf­fi­cient for the Gov­ern­ment to act with­out hav­ing to ap­point a com­mis­sion of in­quiry. And I must al­so con­grat­u­late the new DPP for di­rect­ing the po­lice to start crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to those mat­ters, be­cause his pre­de­ces­sors did not do that.

Is it too lit­tle too late?

When some­thing like this hap­pens two years lat­er, there are cer­tain pos­si­ble ad­verse ef­fects on the pub­lic in­ter­est, be­cause un­der ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, cer­tain ac­tions could have been un­der­tak­en. One such is the freez­ing of bank ac­counts at that time un­til mat­ters are re­solved by due process of law. One of the most im­por­tant as­pects of fight­ing of­fi­cial cor­rup­tion is that the fruits of the mis­deeds must be re­cov­ered by the state, and there are oth­er mech­a­nisms put in place when I was AG to re­al­ly go af­ter per­sons sus­pect­ed of se­ri­ous mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice.

Se­nior, have you been able to dis­cern any pat­tern of be­hav­iour on Gov­ern­ment's part, with re­spect to re­al­ly tack­ling the Ude­cott al­le­ga­tions?

(Lean­ing with fold­ed arms on his desk): Clevon, we must re­mem­ber the Gov­ern­ment's at­ti­tude all along in this mat­ter. Do you re­mem­ber Mr Man­ning tak­ing the po­si­tion that there was no need to....Mr Hart was clean; there were Cab­i­net meet­ings, and min­is­ters went live on the me­dia de­fend­ing Mr Hart. Then the PM took the un­prece­dent­ed move to go in­to the Sen­ate de­fend­ing Mr Hart, and al­so at break­fast meet­ings. He said that out of the gen­eros­i­ty of his heart, he would ap­point a joint se­lect com­mit­tee, and then I de­cid­ed I was go­ing to drop the in­for­ma­tion–which I did–in the Par­lia­ment on the Hart fam­i­ly con­nec­tion.

What was your strat­e­gy?

I want­ed him to tell the coun­try if he thought that he still had to be de­fend­ing Mr Hart. Any prime min­is­ter and any at­tor­ney gen­er­al se­ri­ous about the fight to end of­fi­cial cor­rup­tion would have tak­en that in­for­ma­tion I gave and run with it. You know, set in train an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to those al­le­ga­tions.

Why was this al­most fren­zied rush to de­fend Mr Hart by the PM and his Cab­i­net min­is­ters?

Be­cause, his­tor­i­cal­ly, prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents in Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er coun­tries seem to de­fend per­sons in­volved in ques­tion­able trans­ac­tions, and this has led to their down­fall in cer­tain coun­tries.

What do you be­lieve ought to be the next move by Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning?

He has to come clean, oth­er­wise he will pay a se­vere po­lit­i­cal price; and if he doesn't come clean, there can be all kinds of con­clu­sions which can be ar­rived at on a rea­son­able ba­sis, as to Mr Man­ning's role in this whole af­fair.

Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj, in spite of the per­ceived di­vi­sion in the UNC, can the Op­po­si­tion pres­sure the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to take this scan­dalous af­fair to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion?

I still have con­fi­dence that the UNC can get its act to­geth­er to unite and, to a great ex­tent that would de­pend on the kind of lead­er­ship that comes for­ward from here on. If I were the leader of the UNC, I would have im­me­di­ate­ly launched a joint Op­po­si­tion plat­form, go­ing through­out the coun­try with ap­pro­pri­ate speak­ers with im­pec­ca­ble cred­i­bil­i­ty, and get the en­tire coun­try on board in this ef­fort to save the na­tion from cor­rupt pub­lic of­fi­cials.

Are you sug­gest­ing that the UNC doesn't have those peo­ple at this time?

I am say­ing, Clevon, if were go­ing on a strat­e­gy to fight Man­ning, to bring down Man­ning, there must be care­ful­ly-cho­sen speak­ers. Peo­ple would have to ex­am­ine their own track records to see whether they can with­stand the scruti­ny of a gen­uine com­mit­ment to fight cor­rup­tion. Be­cause not on­ly do we have to con­vince the pop­u­la­tion to move Man­ning, we have to con­vince them that we wouldn't do the same things as the Man­ning regime.

Se­nior, it is ac­knowl­edged that you did very well as AG, but there is still this Ramesh Fac­tor... one of trust. Does that both­er you?

Clevon, I of­fered my­self to be leader of the UNC. The elec­torate vot­ed for an­oth­er per­son; I have ac­cept­ed the re­sult. Okay? If at any­time the UNC elec­torate feel they need a dif­fer­ent kind of lead­er­ship, they can con­tact me and I will con­sid­er it, but I have to ac­cept the fact the par­ty chose a new ex­ec­u­tive to win the next gen­er­al elec­tion. I have since de­cid­ed that I will ac­cept some of the con­sul­tan­cy of­fers I have re­ceived from abroad, and there­fore I will not very of­ten be in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Is this an overnight de­ci­sion of yours, Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj?

No; be­cause I did tell the par­ty that if you elect­ed me I would take two years off to pre­pare the par­ty to win the next gen­er­al elec­tion. They be­lieve the new ex­ec­u­tive can do it. I wish them well. I can­not wor­ry now about trust or any­thing like that. They have made their de­ci­sion.

Have you, sir, made any over­tures to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have you play a greater role in bring­ing to fruition the stat­ed mis­sion of the new ex­ec­u­tive over the next two years?

(Voice drops) Clevon, I made an over­ture and I had a meet­ing with her. Jack Warn­er and Kam­la do not want Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj. They have found an­oth­er can­di­date for Tabaquite, my good friend Anand Ram­lo­gan. They feel they can win the elec­tion on their own. I brought Kam­la in­to the par­ty, and I am pre­pared to as­sist the par­ty in any way I can, but there is a lim­it to what I can do.

Are you leav­ing the par­ty?

No. I am not leav­ing, but I have to ac­cept what the par­ty has done. The lead­er­ship are say­ing all those who lost must go, and they have tak­en steps to un­der­mine me in my con­stituen­cy. I told my con­stituents yes­ter­day that I am bring­ing Anand to help me in my con­stituen­cy. Kam­la has al­so agreed to help me, and I am look­ing for­ward to their pres­ence every month in Tabaquite, so what must I do? I can­not im­pose my­self on the mem­ber­ship or the par­ty. Clevon, you see, I don't think you all un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing.

What do you mean by that, se­nior?

Kam­la be­lieves she is the next Prime Min­is­ter al­ready, and Jack be­lieves he is al­ready the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. They have al­ready cho­sen their Cab­i­net. I thought you would have known this, Clevon. And some of my col­leagues who signed that let­ter sup­port­ing Kam­la will not be in that Cab­i­net.

Is this your po­lit­i­cal swan­song, Mr Lawrence Ma­haraj?

(smil­ing for the first time in the 46-minute in­ter­view) Of course, not. I am still the elect­ed MP for Tabaquite, but a man got to do what he has to do, Clevon. Al­though, I am will­ing to help the par­ty in achiev­ing our goal of form­ing the next gov­ern­ment.

From your van­tage point, where do you see the uni­fi­ca­tion dri­ve go­ing at this point?

If the lead­er­ship of the UNC does not act as it should, the mem­ber­ship of the UNC and the COP would put pres­sure on the lead­er­ship of both par­ties to act in the di­rec­tion they want to see tak­ing place.