Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ex­act­ly when is “a short time?”

That’s the ques­tion from for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, who says the par­ty’s lead­er­ship is al­low­ing Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj to dic­tate the pace of when he will re­sign.

Ford in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day, af­ter PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les last week con­firmed that the PNM should see “an ef­fec­tive res­ig­na­tion” from Ma­haraj “in a short time.”

This, af­ter Ma­haraj has been at the cen­tre of PN­Mites’ crit­i­cism on var­i­ous counts af­ter he at­tend­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s Christ­mas fundrais­er din­ner the same day his cor­po­ra­tion had its own Christ­mas func­tion, which he did not at­tend. Ma­haraj had de­fend­ed his at­ten­dance at the UNC event, say­ing it wasn’t im­prop­er. Apart from oth­er ac­cu­sa­tions and con­cerns by PNM mem­bers, he was re­cent­ly ac­cused of post­ing his per­son­al busi­ness trip to Guyana and ob­tain­ing an over­seas In­di­an cit­i­zen­ship iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card on his plat­form un­der the ti­tle of may­or.

Ford had sent a March 16 let­ter to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­ming on the is­sues con­cern­ing Ma­haraj, call­ing for him to be re­moved and for Beck­les to act. Ford cit­ed var­i­ous oth­er is­sues in the PNM, where of­fi­cials and can­di­dates had been re­moved (or had to apol­o­gise) for state­ments and ac­tions which tar­nished the par­ty’s im­age. Ford had asked Cum­mings for the let­ter to be read in PNM’s March gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing, but that wasn’t done.

Beck­les sub­se­quent­ly told the me­dia she had had a meet­ing with Ma­haraj and dis­cussed the mat­ter and he in­di­cat­ed when he ac­cept­ed the may­or­ship it was for two years. Beck­les claimed he in­di­cat­ed he would re­sign. But a me­dia re­port sub­se­quent­ly quot­ed Ma­haraj as say­ing he wasn’t in a po­si­tion to com­ment on his res­ig­na­tion, as he need­ed to “speak with the PNM po­lit­i­cal leader first.”

Oth­er PNM of­fi­cials al­so queried the sit­u­a­tion adding that Ma­haraj isn’t say­ing any­thing about re­sign­ing.

Ma­haraj didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia queries yes­ter­day on when he would re­sign. He said he “wasn’t tak­ing any calls from any press.” It’s un­der­stood he’s in the US and is due back mid-month.

Beck­les al­so didn’t re­ply yes­ter­day on ex­act­ly when Ma­haraj will re­sign.

Ford said he’d seen Beck­les com­ments and Ma­haraj’s state­ment, “how­ev­er, since he said he’d on­ly tak­en the post for two years and that end­ed last Sep­tem­ber, there should be no dif­fi­cul­ty in re­sign­ing im­me­di­ate­ly once the leader de­mand­ed a res­ig­na­tion from him in the cir­cum­stances of his sit­u­a­tion. But it seems that he is dic­tat­ing the pace of his res­ig­na­tion.”

“In my 58 years in the PNM, I’ve nev­er seen a sit­u­a­tion where an or­di­nary mem­ber could be left to dic­tate their own terms of ref­er­ence as to when they hold pub­lic of­fice - she should have told him to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly. But it ap­pears he is de­cid­ing on when he’s go­ing and the leader is bow­ing to his pace. The par­ty’s March 28 Gen­er­al Coun­cil should have been giv­en a date of when he is re­sign­ing,” Ford said.

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were aired on Face­book by for­mer PNM ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Dane Wil­son, who al­so called for the PNM lead­er­ship to act now.

“Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj can­not be al­lowed to re­sign on his own terms,” Wil­son said.