Gail Alexan­der

While there are con­cerns by Cou­va North con­stituents about the UNC’s re­place­ment for MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al, the area’s ex­ec­u­tive is work­ing with new can­di­date Ravi Rati­ram.

How­ev­er, they say some rea­son should have been giv­en on why Ram­di­al wasn’t se­lect­ed.

Cou­va North ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Or­lan­do Nages­sar aired this opin­ion yes­ter­day af­ter the unit be­gan work­ing with Rati­ram.

Con­cerns had been swirling some UNC con­stituen­cies since last Sun­day’s an­nounce­ment of the Op­po­si­tion’s elec­tion can­di­dates for the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Of the 18 in­cum­bent MPs, eight were re­tained and 10 re­placed.

Some were asked to step down. Some were promised a place in a fu­ture UNC Gov­ern­ment.

But com­plaints were ex­pressed in Cu­mu­to -Man­zanil­la, Cou­va North, Ca­roni Cen­tral and Ch­agua­nas East, whose MPs were re­placed.

A so­cial me­dia pe­ti­tion seek­ing re­moval of the Cou­va North can­di­date was mount­ed by one Cou­va North woman.

There are al­so con­cerns about queries raised by PNM min­is­ters dur­ing 2015 elec­tions about Rati­ram who was the UNC’s Point Fortin can­di­date then.

Cou­va North’s Nages­sar said his ex­ec­u­tive was aware of con­stituents’ con­cerns on the loss of Ram­di­al. He said af­ter the an­nounce­ment of Ram­di­al’s re­moval, the unit, not­ing con­stituents’ out­cry, wrote a let­ter to the lead­er­ship on this and de­liv­ered it to the San Fer­nan­do of­fice. He said no-one knew why she was re­moved.

“We sought some word as many peo­ple were very dis­ap­point­ed. Ra­mona has very good re­la­tions with this area,” he added.

Nages­sar said his group wait­ed and the UNC’s chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai came out and spoke to them.

“We were told to trust the leader, she knew what she was do­ing and not on­ly Ra­mona was changed, but oth­er peo­ple al­so.”

Orlando Nagessar

“So we’ve said the par­ty is big­ger than any­one else and if that’s the leader’s de­ci­sion....well...we still feel dis­ap­point­ed but if that’s her de­ci­sion. We’ll work with (Rati­ram) to en­sure Cou­va North re­mains UNC. We had a long meet­ing with him Mon­day and pledged sup­port."

Oth­er Cou­va North of­fi­cials at the meet­ing men­tioned they were dis­ap­point­ed but would abide by the leader’s de­ci­sion.

Nages­sar said Ram­di­al was dis­ap­point­ed but has met Rati­ram and wished every­one well. He said a few peo­ple may with­hold votes but oth­ers would vote.

"Ra­mona had a plan for the area go­ing for­ward, we await the new plan," he said.

Con­cerns on Cu­mu­to can­di­date

On an­oth­er new can­di­date, Cu­mu­to’s Rai Rag­bir, the UNC’s Su­ruj Ram­bachan said there had been res­o­lu­tion of al­leged is­sues in 2012 con­cern­ing the CEO of state-owned Com­mu­ni­ty Im­prove­ment Ser­vices Ltd (CISL). That com­pa­ny was chaired by Rab­gir. An Ex­press ar­ti­cle had al­leged Rag­bir and then Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma “made no ef­fort to act ”on in­for­ma­tion they’d re­ceived re­gard­ing al­le­ga­tions of im­prop­er con­duct against the-then CISL of­fi­cial.

Ram­bachan, then a min­is­ter, had (in the ar­ti­cle) promised to look in­to CISL's gov­er­nance is­sues and ad­mit­ted breach­es oc­curred re­lat­ed to cer­tain is­sues.

Ram­bachan was to have got­ten a re­port from Rag­bir.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said that sit­u­a­tion had been re­solved.

On Rag­bir’s can­di­da­cy, Ram­bachan said he as­sumed the lead­er­ship would have done their back­ground checks “as is re­quired of them.”

Rag­bir is due to be­gin walk­ing Cu­mu­to soon but some con­stituents and groups are still con­cerned. Blue Moun­tain Wa­ters own­er Prem Badaloo said, “I ful­ly sup­port the MP (Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein). She has a fan­tas­tic re­la­tion­ship with con­stituents. She’s there for wed­dings, fu­ner­als, you name it. She’s quite a favourite. An­oth­er MP won’t have made the time the way she’s done for peo­ple.’’

"I don’t know the new can­di­date or his abil­i­ties. I hope the par­ty doesn’t just de­pend on the area as ‘safe’ sup­port but al­so pro­vides good rep­re­sen­ta­tion.“

UNC par­ty of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted there are al­so con­tin­u­ing mixed feel­ings about new Ca­roni Cen­tral can­di­date Arnold Ram, who met the ex­ec­u­tive on Mon­day and al­so with Ch­agua­nas East’s Van­dana Mo­hit.

Out­go­ing in­cum­bent Fazal Karim said yes­ter­day he was ad­vised by the lead­er­ship to as­sist the cam­paign "which I’ve agreed to do".

"There’s been no re­ply to calls to oth­er MPs on whether they‘re al­so walk­ing," he said.