For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj is quick­ly build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion as the man with the in­for­ma­tion, the mark to bust or just the man with the bomb­shells to drop.

In just the past few weeks, he has gained at­ten­tion for shar­ing the num­bers of al­most all the Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters, an­gered Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­to al­most chang­ing his own num­ber and has been la­belled a na­tion­al nui­sance by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young and a lowlife by the PM.

While for some Ma­haraj is the brave new so­cial me­dia sol­dier, for oth­ers he is the pub­lic pest putting them on blast. He most re­cent­ly shared a video of the Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan en­joy­ing a drink and a song at a Christ­mas fete thrown by a known con­trac­tor and cre­at­ed such a stir, it was the poll ques­tion on one evening news­cast.

Ma­haraj has racked up a sig­nif­i­cant so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing and he now has peo­ple turn­ing up at his door ask­ing for help, in the hope he will bring at­ten­tion to their is­sues.

“That’s what re­al­ly start­ed this, peo­ple called me, showed up at my door, var­i­ous peo­ple, all ask­ing for me to do some­thing to get their is­sue heard by the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

That’s when he de­cid­ed to start shar­ing Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters’ num­bers.

“When they want your vote they’re will­ing to sit and talk to you, they in your com­mu­ni­ty. Then they get in­to of­fice and you can’t even see them let alone reach them,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia sat with the con­tro­ver­sial for­mer min­is­ter to get a bet­ter idea of what dri­ves him, what’s his next step and whether he in­tends to get bold­er/more des­per­ate as the 2020 elec­tion draws clos­er.

Q: Are you a na­tion­al nui­sance or do you see your­self as help­ing the po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion?

A: This moniker of “na­tion­al nui­sance” is one giv­en by Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as re­sult of my con­tin­u­ous and un­re­lent­ing dis­clo­sures on the in­com­pe­tence of the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion and in par­tic­u­lar the Gov­ern­ment’s aban­don­ment of pro­cure­ment process­es for the San­dals Re­sort Project, Cabo Star, Ocean Flower 2, Galleons Pas­sage, Austal and In­cat Ves­sel.

I am more apt­ly a nui­sance for the PNM and the PNM wants to think that means the same as na­tion­al. Through my var­i­ous ef­forts, the po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion on var­i­ous is­sues has found fer­tile ground in the na­tion­al land­scape.

These ideas won’t be mut­ed by Stu­art Young name call­ing.

How has your pres­ence on so­cial me­dia helped your caus­es?

I quick­ly found in ex­pos­ing the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s in­com­pe­tence that I could not on­ly re­ly up­on tra­di­tion­al me­dia, due to po­lit­i­cal bi­as­es of some re­porters and own­ers, in­flu­ence of PNM fi­nanciers and the fear of los­ing Gov­ern­ment ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enues. As such, I fo­cus on so­cial me­dia to share my “news” and cur­rent­ly my posts on Face­book ex­ceed 233,000 with some posts get­ting more than oth­ers. I al­so utilise What­sApp to reach di­rect­ly many cit­i­zens who are in­ter­est­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Re­cent­ly, I have start­ed to fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing my Twit­ter ac­count. These var­i­ous so­cial me­dia feeds have had a tremen­dous im­pact on my mes­sage reach­ing a large and di­verse au­di­ence.

What are the rea­sons be­hind your lat­est at­tack on the Gov­ern­ment?

I am not at­tack­ing the Gov­ern­ment, I am ex­pos­ing the in­com­pe­tence and in­ep­ti­tude of the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion as a so­cial­ly con­scious cit­i­zen. For ex­am­ple, I warned about the aban­don­ment of the pro­cure­ment process with the Galleons Pas­sage, and I was joined by Har­ry Ra­goo­nanan and Nyree Alphon­so to speak out against its un­suit­abil­i­ty for the seabridge. The Gov­ern­ment con­vened a press con­fer­ence to call us names, yet now all our pre­dic­tions are com­ing to pass with the ves­sel. All cit­i­zens in­ter­est­ed in our coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment should not fear to hold the Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able and re­spon­si­ble for the de­ci­sions and ac­tions they take on our be­half.

Would you hold the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as ac­count­able if the sit­u­a­tions were re­versed?

As part of the UNC gov­ern­ment un­der Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the gov­ern­ment was in­deed held ac­count­able. That process took place with­in the con­fines of the Cab­i­net and I can at­test to very ro­bust and heat­ed dis­cus­sions to that very end. Un­der the Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, I, as a colum­nist for a dai­ly news­pa­per, made crit­i­cal com­men­taries but those were the ear­ly days of my own de­vel­op­ment.

Are you plan­ning a re­turn to pol­i­tics?

I do not be­lieve I have ever left pol­i­tics. I hold the view that once you have a so­cial con­science you are dri­ven to be in­volved in is­sues af­fect­ing the na­tion and cit­i­zens. You do not have to be a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to do that, you can be a Mem­ber for the Peo­ple. You would re­call that pri­or to be­ing ap­point­ed a Sen­a­tor I was very ac­tive dur­ing the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion point­ing out sim­i­lar­ly is­sues of gov­er­nance.

You seem to get more at­ten­tion than most op­po­si­tion mem­bers, why is that?

I do not agree with that state­ment. That is like ask­ing if one part of your body is more im­por­tant than the oth­er. I be­lieve we all have a role to play, mine is what it has evolved in­to over the past few years in so­cial me­dia, while Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers are mak­ing their mark with­in the Par­lia­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives or Sen­ate and serv­ing the par­ty in or­gan­is­ing it­self for the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Have cit­i­zens been reach­ing out to you for as­sis­tance on is­sues? Could you de­scribe some of those?

I have been con­tact­ed by cit­i­zens on count­less is­sues for help on one is­sue or an­oth­er, all of which I try to ren­der some de­gree of help as lim­it­ed as it may be. For ex­am­ple, as­sist­ing law stu­dents who are re­peat­ing and faced an un­ex­pect­ed in­crease in fees, high­light­ing the plight of the school feed­ing cater­ers in be­ing paid by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, bring­ing to light the sus­pen­sion of the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty se­cu­ri­ty, speak­ing for the rice farm­ers, or fish­er­men as well as chut­ney artists, and most re­cent­ly mak­ing pub­lic Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters’ cell num­bers, cit­i­zens have a di­rect ac­cess to Min­is­ters. The lat­ter I have had re­ports from cit­i­zens in­di­cat­ing that Min­is­ters are re­spond­ing, pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly, de­pend­ing on the min­is­ter. This has cre­at­ed a form of di­rect democ­ra­cy that com­ple­ments so­cial me­dia.

Have you been con­tact­ed by po­lice or any­one in au­thor­i­ty about shar­ing Gov­ern­ment mem­bers’ num­bers?

I have not been con­tact­ed by the po­lice or any­one for shar­ing num­bers. I await to see if they do and what will be the le­gal au­thor­i­ty they use for con­tact­ing me as such. At one point TSTT print­ed a tele­phone di­rec­to­ry of all num­bers and to be un­list­ed one had to pay ex­tra for that fa­cil­i­ty. I can’t re­call the po­lice con­tact­ing TSTT. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, as well as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, shared their num­bers with the pub­lic with­out fear and Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein in­struct­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors to share their num­bers, so I am con­fused as to why Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley is to­tal­ly afraid of hav­ing his num­bers. While AG Faris Al-Rawi in­di­cat­ed to the me­dia that he has re­ceived nu­mer­ous com­pli­men­ta­ry mes­sages, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley tells the pub­lic that he is the re­cip­i­ent of threats and ha­rass­ment. I think this is in­struc­tive and the mes­sage is that the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion is un­pop­u­lar with the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens.

Well, you cer­tain­ly got the Prime Min­is­ter’s at­ten­tion. What are you us­ing your plat­form for now?

I in­tend to con­tin­ue to use the plat­form to high­light the ills of the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion that are hid­den from the pub­lic glare and scruti­ny. Cit­i­zens from all walks of life and all cor­ners of the coun­try con­tin­ue to share is­sues that need to be ex­posed and I shall con­tin­ue to try to as­sist them.

What are some of the things you’ve ac­com­plished through this so­cial ac­tivism that you’re most proud of?

There have been many achieve­ments I can re­flect up­on but if I were to sin­gle out one I would say that Anand Ram­lo­gan and my­self as a team have shown all cit­i­zens that they can hold gov­ern­ment ac­count­able us­ing the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act along with the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act. When Anand and I first start­ed with the FOIA in the courts, not many, if any­one at all, were us­ing it. To­day it is com­mon­place, be­ing used by em­ploy­ees who be­lieve they have been wronged by the State, as well as ac­tivists in var­i­ous spheres.

Who are your ide­al picks for the next gov­ern­ment?

Picks for gov­ern­ment are for Prime Min­is­ters and I don’t think I will be in that po­si­tion. How­ev­er, if I had to, it would in­clude peo­ple who aren’t in pol­i­tics right now, new faces and new ideas. Peo­ple like Di­ane Hadad, Afra Ray­mond, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, Sharon In­gelfield, Wayne Chance, Roger Ho­sein, Nor­man Sab­ga, Derek Chin, Gary Aboud, Leela Ramdeen, Mar­la Dukha­ran, Gillian Wall, Dale Enoch, Kirk Wait­he, Kirk Meighoo and Rolph Bal­go­b­in.