?For­mer COP can­di­date at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan was warm­ly wel­comed back in­to the fold of the UNC as he mount­ed a po­lit­i­cal plat­form in sup­port of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Tabaquite on Mon­day night.

Ram­lo­gan, who con­test­ed the Tabaquite seat on a Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) tick­et and lost to Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), re­ceived a rous­ing round of ap­plause as he open­ly de­clared his sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar and en­dorsed her as this coun­try's fu­ture Prime Min­is­ter. Per­sad-Bisses­sar her­ald­ed Ram­lo­gan's re­turn as a sign that hope is alive. "We wel­come our broth­er in more ways than one, my broth­er in law, as a lawyer and, a friend Anand Ram­lo­gan...strong and pow­er­ful, wel­come back home...even though there is a feel­ing of dark­ness and op­pres­sion, there is much light and hope," she said.

Ram­lo­gan, ad­dress­ing the au­di­ence which spilled on­to the streets at the East In­di­an Friend­ly So­ci­ety Hall, made it clear that there was on­ly room for two par­ties in the pol­i­tics of T&T. He said the COP was no longer a po­lit­i­cal force and called on his for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Win­ston Dook­er­an to join with the UNC. "There is no room in T&T for a third par­ty, the pol­i­tics dic­tate, and re­mov­ing the PNM re­quires that we all join hands and come on the big ship of the UNC and put our pad­dles to­geth­er."

The at­tor­ney said while he held Dook­er­an in high re­gard, the for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor lacked the mag­net­ism and dy­namism that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has, to cap­ture the pop­u­lar vote and ex­cite the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion. "Win­ston is a de­cent man, Win­ston is an ho­n­ourable man. I will not re­gret the de­ci­sions I made in the past....(but) when I put the two lead­ers mano y mano, (man to man) I know I see a fight­er in Kam­la, I see a nice fel­la in Win­ston, but he's no fight­er," he said.