Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Trans­port Min­is­ter and Fyz­abad MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma says while he did not breach any pro­to­cols in his con­grat­u­la­to­ry ban­ner, which de­picts him along­side Pres­i­dent-elect An­tho­ny Car­mona, he is will­ing to re­move it.

Shar­ma, in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said he was not aware the ban­ner was draw­ing crit­i­cism, since it was on­ly in­tend­ed to ex­tend con­grat­u­la­to­ry greet­ings to Car­mona."The ar­gu­ment seems to be the pho­to of the MP ap­pear­ing on the ban­ner is not the mes­sage. And if it seems to be the pho­to of the MP, that is un­for­tu­nate. I was not aware that there were crit­i­cisms. If it was some­thing wrong then I will be the first to apol­o­gise. But no one has in au­thor­i­ty has in­di­cat­ed any breach," Shar­ma said.

Last week the full colour ban­ner, which has Shar­ma's pho­to on the left and Car­mona's pho­to on the right, was hung out­side Shar­ma's Uni­ty Court, Fyz­abad con­stituen­cy of­fice. A pho­to of the ban­ner ap­peared ex­clu­sive­ly in the T&T Guardian on Sat­ur­day.He as­sured there was no in­ten­tion to politi­cise the Pres­i­dent-elect.The min­is­ter said the fact that Car­mona, who is orig­i­nal­ly from Fyz­abad, was elect­ed Pres­i­dent is a "big thing for us in the con­stituen­cy."

He said when one looked at the ban­ner his pho­to­graph was small­er than Car­mona's which he said was de­lib­er­ate be­cause of Car­mona's po­si­tion as the soon-to-be Head of State.

He said it was not the first time con­grat­u­la­tions were sent out in such a man­ner, but it was the first time peo­ple in Fyz­abad have a Pres­i­dent-elect which is "some­thing to be cel­e­brat­ed. We be­lieve it is a huge thing."

Groups in the con­stituen­cy, he said, had spo­ken about plac­ing a ban­ner in Fyz­abad and he agreed."There was no in­tent to em­bar­rass or breach pro­to­col. The in­ten­tion was to mo­ti­vate (school chil­dren) and con­grat­u­late. We re­al­ly thought when we did it the whole coun­try would do it and it sig­nals to all that this is some­thing new," he added.Shar­ma said he was cer­tain there would be oth­ers who would do the same by way of ad­ver­tise­ments and if there were any pro­to­cols bro­ken the au­thor­i­ties should no­ti­fy him."We will have to be guid­ed in fu­ture. It is a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence," he said.