Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Civ­il rights ac­tivist Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day that any mem­ber of the coali­tion par­ty who fails to walk away from a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment is an en­e­my of the peo­ple. Ma­haraj was ad­dress­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 150 high­way rerouters at Door­bas­sa Recre­ation Ground, San Fran­cique, fol­low­ing a mo­tor­cade in Oropouche.

Ma­haraj, who is rep­re­sent­ing the le­gal in­ter­ests of the group, said some lead­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) were too in­ter­est­ed in "eat­ing a food" to stand up against cor­rup­tion. He urged cit­i­zens to form a coali­tion of the peo­ple to re­move the PP. He paid trib­ute to po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah for walk­ing out of the coali­tion and said all of the coali­tion lead­ers must have the in­ter­est of the peo­ple at heart.

"I want to re­mind the leader of COP that they made a promise to the pop­u­la­tion. They can­not stay in Gov­ern­ment and still say they are sup­port­ing the peo­ple. If they stay in the Gov­ern­ment they are the en­e­my of the peo­ple," Ma­haraj said. He added: "They ride your back and get in­to pow­er and then say they sup­port­ing two mas­ters."

Ma­haraj ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to over­throw the Con­sti­tu­tion. He said al­though he had no in­ter­est in elec­toral pol­i­tics, he will con­tin­ue to de­fend the na­tion and the Con­sti­tu­tion. Ab­du­lah said the coun­try is in a dan­ger­ous po­si­tion fol­low­ing the pas­sage of The Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011. He said abol­ish­ment of pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries will un­der­mine jus­tice.

"One of the clear un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences of this Act-and I be­lieve that those who draft­ed it were well aware-is that all le­gal mat­ters will col­lapse and can't be pur­sued," Ab­du­lah said. He added that the coun­try will be in a dan­ger­ous po­si­tion if peo­ple charged with cor­rup­tion do not have a tri­al. "The sig­nal sent is those who are charged with cor­rup­tion will nev­er have to face a tri­al," Ab­du­lah con­tend­ed.

The MSJ leader said if peo­ple are not brought to tri­al, the soul of the na­tion will be in dan­ger. The venue for yes­ter­day's ral­ly was changed twice af­ter ac­tivists claimed they re­ceived death threats. It was ini­tial­ly card­ed for the Ram­per­sad Broth­ers Ranch, then was shift­ed to the Jokhan Trace Mandir. How­ev­er, by mid­day it was again rerout­ed to the Door­bas­sa Recre­ation Ground. Al­so ad­dress­ing the ral­ly was Pres­i­dent of the Sheep and Goat As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan and for­mer Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Trevor Su­dama.