Adri­an Boodan

The main play­ers in the plan to get rid of Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan as May­or of Ch­agua­nas cel­e­brat­ed their suc­cess at the Kam-Po Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day.

Five UNC mem­bers of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, in­clud­ing Or­lan­do Nages­sar, Gopaul Boodan, Joey Samuel, Fe­li­cia Is­sa­hak and Nars­ingh Ram­baran met in cau­cus and de­cid­ed to re-elect Ram­bachan and Ramesh Ramd­han as al­der­men, Nages­sar said. Vot­ing for the post of may­or is to take place on Thurs­day. Nages­sar said every­one at the cau­cus meet­ing de­cid­ed to vote for Ram­bachan, how­ev­er, Nages­sar said when the cau­cus en­tered the bor­ough hall he saw Ch­agua­nas West MP Austin "Jack" Warn­er, Ch­agua­nas East MP Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid and for­mer Ca­roni East MP Gan­ga Singh. Nages­sar said Is­sa­hak stood up and nom­i­nat­ed Natasha Navas, 30, a bank em­ploy­ee, as al­der­man. Al­so nom­i­nat­ed were Ramd­han and Ram­bachan. By se­cret bal­lot, Navas got five votes, Ram­bachan three and Ramd­han eight.

Nages­sar said he was shocked. "The coun­cil, a UNC coun­cil has been hand­ed over to the PNM with­out an elec­tion. This is an in­di­ca­tion of PNM agents work­ing with­in the bor­ough." Nages­sar said Warn­er had said open­ly that his in­ten­tion was to rid the coun­cil of Ram­bachan. Warn­er ac­com­pa­nied Is­sa­hak, Ram­baran and Singh along with PNM coun­cil­lors Pa­tri­cia Bap­tiste, Ronald Heera and Bernard Bai­ley and the two new al­der­men, Navas and Ramd­han to the Kam-Po Restau­rant to cel­e­brate. When the T&T Guardian ar­rived short­ly af­ter mid­day, Warn­er had al­ready left. Singh, who was seat­ed next to Ramd­han, said the meet­ing was pri­vate and the me­dia would not be al­lowed to take pho­tos in­side. He said a news con­fer­ence was planned af­ter Thurs­day's elec­tion of a may­or.

Nei­ther Ram­baran nor Is­sa­hak were will­ing to speak with the me­dia. While mak­ing a hasty dash to his car, Ram­baran said he vot­ed for Ram­bachan. Navas re­port­ed­ly left the venue through a back en­trance to avoid the me­dia, sources said. For­mer Ch­agua­nas MP Manohar Ram­saran, joined the cel­e­bra­tion around 3.19 pm. He claimed that Ram­bachan had be­come very un­pop­u­lar in re­cent times.