Gail Alexan­der

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, as is present­ly con­sti­tut­ed, is the great­est as­set to the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment re­main­ing in pow­er, says in­ac­tive UNC mem­ber Ger­ald Ramdeen.

The for­mer UNC sen­a­tor says the UNC in its present form isn’t an at­trac­tive op­tion or vi­able al­ter­na­tive to the Gov­ern­ment.

And he has al­so said Gov­ern­ment has de­liv­ered on the Drag­on Gas Field mat­ter.

Ramdeen has been a UNC mem­ber since the 2000 pe­ri­od, but is cur­rent­ly in­ac­tive. He was ap­point­ed to the Sen­ate in 2016 as a sen­a­tor. He re­signed as a Sen­a­tor in 2019, fol­low­ing an al­leged cor­rup­tion charge in re­la­tion to an al­leged kick­back scan­dal linked to for­mer At­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who was his co-ac­cused in that mat­ter. How­ev­er, the charges against both men were dis­con­tin­ued by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) last year af­ter the state’s main wit­ness, Vin­cent Nel­son, re­fused to tes­ti­fy un­til an­oth­er mat­ter he had against the state was com­plet­ed.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Ramdeen said he sup­port­ed the idea of the Drag­on Gas Field get­ting off the ground.

Ramdeen said, “It’s pro­gres­sive for T&T and a very good step. Un­der­stand me well—I’m not talk­ing about the PNM but as I said, the Gov­ern­ment has been able to be suc­cess­ful in the first stage of the Drag­on Field mat­ter and it’s very pro­gres­sive for T&T.

“I think at the end of the day, any­one who has the best in­ter­ests of all T&T at heart would be pleased Gov­ern­ment is go­ing in this di­rec­tion. Whether it’s UNC or PNM, the fact is Dr Row­ley has de­liv­ered this and there is great po­ten­tial for T&T to ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from this.”

He added, “This mat­ter has been worked on by var­i­ous gov­ern­ments and this ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­liv­ered on it. My po­si­tion is not a mat­ter of sup­port­ing the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment, but it’s a fact that Gov­ern­ment has de­liv­ered on this is­sue and if things fall in­to place, the po­ten­tial for T&T to ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly is there.”

On Tues­day, PM Row­ley re­vealed that the US gov­ern­ment had giv­en T&T a two-year li­cense to de­vel­op the re­serves in Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas Field.

Ramdeen al­so said he’s not play­ing an ac­tive role with the UNC cur­rent­ly.

How­ev­er, he said the way the UNC is “present­ly con­sti­tut­ed,” he feels that as a per­son, he can make a bet­ter con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try than as a UNC mem­ber.

“The Op­po­si­tion has not con­duct­ed it­self in a man­ner that makes it a vi­able al­ter­na­tive to the Gov­ern­ment; a clas­sic ex­am­ple is there was an En­er­gy con­fer­ence held in Port-of-Spain re­cent­ly with multi­na­tion­als present and while the Op­po­si­tion is at the front in crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment, where there’s a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor, the Op­po­si­tion is silent.”

But he said join­ing the PNM isn’t an op­tion on the ta­ble at the mo­ment and he hadn’t been ap­proached by the PNM.

“There are a lot of peo­ple in T&T who are will­ing to con­tribute to T&T’s de­vel­op­ment and not a lot of them are aligned to the PNM. But one is sure that in the present struc­ture and form of the Op­po­si­tion, it’s not an at­trac­tive op­tion or vi­able al­ter­na­tive to the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.