Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

New­ly-ap­point­ed Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj re­fused to com­ment on Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's de­nun­ci­a­tion of him as a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter. Dur­ing a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment pub­lic meet­ing in Cou­va on Wednes­day night, Row­ley re­mind­ed the crowd of al­leged re­marks of big­otry against Mus­lims made by Ma­haraj sev­er­al years ago. Row­ley said: "I want to ask all Mus­lims in Trinidad and To­ba­go, how do you feel that the Prime Min­is­ter vol­un­tar­i­ly picks up and puts in­to Cab­i­net a man who has his own views about Mus­lims in Trinidad?" Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said: "I don't take Dr Row­ley se­ri­ous­ly and will not make any com­ments." He said he wished Row­ley best of luck in his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer. Un­aware and sur­prised to hear Row­ley was in Cou­va, Ma­haraj said: "Then he should con­test the Cou­va seat."

Asked if he felt the com­ments he made in 2004 would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect him, Ma­haraj added: "When I start to per­form, call me back." Ma­haraj was a pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) at the time. The is­sue was tak­en to court in 2005 by the NL­CB, chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion by the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion not to pre­fer a charge of mis­con­duct against Ma­haraj over the al­leged re­marks. Ac­cord­ing to the facts, as stat­ed in the judge­ment hand­ed down by puisne judge Nolan Bereaux in the High Court in June 2006, on Sep­tem­ber 3 2004 the NL­CB held an of­fi­cial din­ner to ho­n­our pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Ten­nessee Lot­tery Ed­u­ca­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Re­bec­ca Paul.

Five days lat­er, act­ing sec­re­tary to the board, Noel Mal­oney, re­port­ed that dur­ing the din­ner Ma­haraj had made deroga­to­ry re­marks about peo­ple of Mus­lim re­li­gion and their holy books. Page three of the judge­ment stat­ed: "Mr Ma­haraj's com­ments al­leged­ly in­clud­ed "All Mus­lims were ter­ror­ists" and "All Mus­lims in Pak­istan and oth­er coun­tries should be ex­e­cut­ed even if it meant wip­ing out whole na­tions and the rest of them should then move to Sau­di Ara­bia." Ma­haraj had de­nied mak­ing those state­ments and the no­tice of mo­tion was dis­missed. The court or­dered NL­CB to pay the com­mis­sion and Ma­haraj's costs.