Pe­ter Bal­roop

UNC can­di­date for po­lit­i­cal leader, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is fin­ish­ing the three-way race with a flour­ish, pre­dict­ing he is in a po­si­tion to get up to 15,000 votes from the 35,000-strong par­ty elec­torate. "I am tar­get­ing 10,000 to 15,000 votes. Any­body who can get that will win," he told the Sun­day Guardian. As the hot­ly-con­test­ed, bit­ter­ly-fought race for par­ty lead­er­ship cli­max­es to­day, Ma­haraj is con­fi­dent, from the feed­back he says he has been get­ting with his cam­paign­ing style, out in the field, that he is in the run­ning. Ma­haraj fer­vent­ly be­lieves he will edge out the in­cum­bent po­lit­i­cal leader, Cou­va North MP Bas­deo Pan­day and Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when the re­sults are an­nounced tonight be­cause the vot­ers will put their X by his open book sym­bol. That con­fi­dence stems from his trekking in the field, in UNC vine­yards, from house to house, greet­ing the peo­ple, press­ing flesh, em­brac­ing ba­bies and chil­dren, and hear­ing their echoes of sup­port for him. His cam­paign strat­e­gy has been to hit the field, con­trary to his ri­vals, who have been stag­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings in UNC strong­holds.

Love over­flow­ing...at­tack me more

The for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al said he had walked the con­stituen­cies of La Brea, Fyz­abad, Siparia, Tabaquite, Oropouche East, Oropouche West and Pointe-a-Pierre. Last Fri­day, he was in Cou­va South and winged through Ca­roni Cen­tral, Ca­roni East, Ch­agua­nas East and Ch­agua­nas West. Yes­ter­day Ma­haraj round­ed off his cam­paign­ing in Tu­na­puna and ar­eas of strong UNC sup­port along the East/West Cor­ri­dor. It was a de­mand­ing ex­er­cise, but he was en­er­gised by his meet­ings with peo­ple who pro­fessed that they would sup­port him at the polls to­day. He said he was in Dig­i­ty and Clarke Road, Pe­nal, last Thurs­day, "and the peo­ple did not want me to go." As he put it: "All I can tell you is they come up to me, em­brace me and tell me I have their to­tal sup­port. "They say don't wor­ry with what the me­dia, the ra­dio, TV, polls say­ing. You have our to­tal sup­port. "They come out of their hous­es say­ing I have ten, 20, two, one vote in their homes. And they are of­fer­ing them­selves to be foot sol­diers and cap­tains for my team on Sun­day (to­day).

Ma­haraj said in his cam­paign he had kept to the is­sues, that the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion must be re­moved. "To do that, for the par­ty to win, the par­ty has to be­come stronger," he added. Dur­ing a ral­ly at Tu­na­puna Hin­du School last Thurs­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar trained her guns on him, say­ing he had nev­er de­nied Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's bold state­ment that it was Ma­haraj who had giv­en him a pho­to­graph of Pan­day's Lon­don res­i­dence, where his two daugh­ters had been liv­ing. That was a turn­ing point in the UNC's po­lit­i­cal for­tunes, and was yet an­oth­er oc­ca­sion when Ma­haraj and Man­ning had forged deals, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Man­ning even boast­ed that Ma­haraj was his best po­lit­i­cal friend. Told of her acid com­ments, cal­cu­lat­ed to sink his chances to­day at the cru­cial polls, Ma­haraj re­fused to be ruf­fled. "The more Kam­la at­tacks me is the more love I am get­ting from the peo­ple...Love is over­flow­ing, so I want them to at­tack me some more."

?'Make the right de­ci­sion'

?Mean­while, as Ma­haraj made his fi­nal elec­tion walk through parts of east Trinidad yes­ter­day, it was an at­mos­phere of mixed re­ac­tions. While some sup­port­ers hugged and kissed him and pledged their sup­port for him, oth­ers shunned when he ap­proached them. "You can count on my vote," were the echoes of some sup­port­ers as he walked along Tu­na­puna Main Road. Oth­ers who open­ly ex­pressed their sup­port for Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar turned their faces. At the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket Ma­haraj was greet­ed with an ear­ful, as ven­dors com­plained about the run down poor fa­cil­i­ties beg­ging for his as­sis­tance. Ma­haraj urged sup­port­ers to make the right de­ci­sion when cast­ing their votes to­day at the in­ter­nal elec­tions. "Sup­port­ers need to think wise­ly and make the right de­ci­sion. In­ter­nal elec­tions can de­ter­mine the fu­ture. It de­ter­mines whether there can be a change of Gov­ern­ment in T&T." Ma­haraj said he opt­ed to use the sym­bol of an open book as his lo­go be­cause it rep­re­sent­ed his life and what he stood for. "My life is open. Any­one who wants to ex­am­ine me can come be­cause I have noth­ing to hide.

–ANI­KA GUMBS-SAN­DI­FORD