Shas­tri Boodan

Dozens of sup­port­ers of boot­ed-out St Au­gus­tine MP Vas­ant Bharath demon­strat­ed out­side of his Tu­na­puna of­fice yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing the UNC se­lect Bharath as its can­di­date for the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. Hay­man Moon­ian, one of the or­gan­is­ers of the demon­stra­tion, said the peo­ple of St Au­gus­tine want­ed Bharath be­cause they be­lieved that he had done an ex­cel­lent job rep­re­sent­ing his con­stituents. He said Bharath de­feat­ed the COP and the PNM in the 2007 elec­tion. Asked if sup­port­ers be­lieved that Bharath was side­lined be­cause he did not de­clare his sup­port for UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Op­po­si­tion Leader af­ter she won the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tion, Moon­ian said Bharath was out of the coun­try at the time. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not need Bharath's sup­port to get the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader.

Moon­ian said there was no ques­tion that Bharath was loy­al to the par­ty. He said: "No Vas­ant, no vote. I per­son­al­ly won't be vot­ing" Moon­ian said he did not be­lieve that Bharath should con­test the seat as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, but be­lieved that Bharath stood a good chance of win­ning as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date. Prem­c­hand Ad­jo­ha, leader of the an­ti-Rapid Rail Move­ment, led a group from Cunu­pia to lend sol­i­dar­i­ty to the demon­stra­tion. Ad­jod­ha said the peo­ple of Cunu­pia stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Bharath, be­cause he had sup­port­ed them. Pre­matie Dur­ga and her hus­band from Bam­boo No 2, Val­sayn South, said she was sup­port­ing Bharath be­cause he as­sist­ed her hus­band to get a car­diac op­er­a­tion. Dur­ga said she would sup­port UNC, re­gard­less of who was the can­di­date. She said she did not know any­thing about Prakash Ra­mad­har, the COP can­di­date, who is re­port­ed to be fight­ing the St Au­gus­tine seat in a uni­ty arrange­ment among the par­ties op­posed to the gov­ern­ment.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Bharath said he was not aware of the demon­stra­tion. He said he was not in­formed by his po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar nor the par­ty's of­fi­cers that the UNC had giv­en the seat to the COP. Bharath said he learnt through a T&T Guardian re­port and was told by Ra­mad­har in a cour­te­ous man­ner, He al­so asked him for his sup­port in the cam­paign. Bharath said he re­mained loy­al to the UNC, and had not even thought about con­test­ing the seat as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the par­ty was still fi­nal­is­ing arrange­ments, and that T&T was a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try where one was en­ti­tled to voice his/her opin­ion.