Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj con­ced­ed de­feat last night, ex­tend­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and say­ing that he hoped she will make good of her plan to take the UNC in­to gov­ern­ment. Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at St Mary's Junc­tion in Freeport last night, Ma­haraj said that the mem­ber­ship had spo­ken over­whelm­ing­ly in favour of Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as they had vot­ed for change. Sev­er­al sup­port­ers greet­ed Ma­haraj as he walked in to loud ap­plause. In a 15-minute ad­dress, he said he looked at the trends of the vot­ing and re­alised that there was no way pos­si­ble that he or Bas­deo Pan­day could win the post of po­lit­i­cal leader. Ma­haraj said he did not think that his ac­ci­den­tal meet­ing with Pan­day re­cent­ly at the of­fice of Kelvin Ram­nath had any­thing to do with his lack of sup­port.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had suc­cess­ful­ly sold the idea that she could take the UNC in­to gov­ern­ment. The de­feat­ed can­di­date said he was look­ing for­ward to the heal­ing process of the par­ty. He said the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the elec­tion process should be set aside. "The elec­tions had many dis­crep­an­cies, but notwith­stand­ing that the UNC ex­ec­u­tive should en­sure that the elec­tions nev­er take place in such a man­ner again, be­cause there were many com­plaints of peo­ple be­ing de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vote," Ma­haraj said. He said he was com­mit­ted to work­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar or any­one else who will take the UNC in­to gov­ern­ment.