Resh­ma Ra­goonath

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress band­wag­on rolled in­to the Tabaquite con­stituen­cy on Mon­day night.

But no­tice­ably ab­sent was the in­cum­bent Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj. Ma­haraj was not among the elect­ed UNC mem­bers who sup­port­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's for the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader. Ques­tioned yes­ter­day about Ma­haraj's ab­sence, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Tabaquite MP was in­vit­ed to the meet­ing but he in­di­cat­ed via e-mail that he would not be able to at­tend. How­ev­er, among the front-line speak­ers at the UNC's Mon­day night fo­rum was Ma­haraj's op­po­nent in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan. Ram­lo­gan con­test­ed the Tabaquite seat on a Con­gress of the Peo­ple tick­et. How­ev­er, at the Gas­par­il­lo meet­ing, he made it clear that his al­le­giance was now with Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC. Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, the UNC po­lit­i­cal leader pro­nounced on the po­lit­i­cal demise of the MP's for Cou­va North and Cou­va South Bas­deo Pan­day and Kelvin Ram­nath, re­spec­tive­ly. She said they com­mit­ted them­selves to the po­lit­i­cal grave­yard by re­fus­ing to sup­port her mo­tion call­ing for the dis­missal of Ude­cott chair­man Calder Hart in the Par­lia­ment last Fri­day. Hart has since re­signed from Ude­cott and the oth­er four state boards he sat on. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ex­treme­ly crit­i­cal of the par­ty's founder on this oc­ca­sion, say­ing "that will be record­ed a one of the most spite­ful, sense­less acts of po­lit­i­cal stu­pid­i­ty and be­tray­al of the peo­ple."

She vowed not to be dis­tract­ed by "these po­lit­i­cal sideshows and acts of sab­o­tage from those, whose time has past. They will not dis­tract us from the mis­sion ahead." She said his­to­ry would judge both men, but ex­pressed sad­ness that "they will not be re­mem­bered for the po­lit­i­cal life they lived but for the po­lit­i­cal sui­cide that they have now com­mit­ted. It's trag­ic..it is trag­ic, there I so pro­nounce," Per­sad-Bisses­sar told sup­port­ers. She added: "I leave that mat­ter to be buried in the po­lit­i­cal ceme­tery. I am per­form­ing the fi­nal po­lit­i­cal rites which their acts have so im­posed on them­selves." One-time staunch Pan­day sup­port­er deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC and Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribed his col­leagues be­hav­iour as "an act of treach­ery and be­tray­al, not of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, but of the UNC and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go." He added: "They wil­ful­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly did not sup­port the mo­tion." Mooni­lal sent a mes­sage to those who "seek to bring the UNC in­to dis­re­pute...ei­ther you lead, fol­low or get out of the blast­ed way." Per­sad-Bisses­sar has since filed a sec­ond mo­tion, this time call­ing for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the en­tire board of di­rec­tors of Ude­cott.