Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says he will not en­gage in any dirty fight against Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said their wran­gle was sim­i­lar to the Oba­ma/Clin­ton po­lit­i­cal fight. Ma­haraj was speak­ing at a meet­ing held in the bow­els of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Siparia con­stituen­cy at Pe­nal Rock Road, yes­ter­day. Ad­dress­ing Siparia con­stituents, Ma­haraj said: "I wel­come my sis­ter Kay­la in this im­por­tant de­bate...We will de­bate this re­spon­si­bly in the man­ner of (Barack) Oba­ma and (Hillary) Clin­ton." He hint­ed, how­ev­er, that PNM agents were at­tempt­ing to in­fil­trate the strong base of the UNC.

Ma­haraj said he viewed with sus­pi­cion the state­ments made by promi­nent COP sup­port­ers that they would re­turn to the arms of the UNC on­ly if Per­sad-Bisses­sar was leader. "I will not al­low the UNC to be tak­en over by any oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion," he said. "I want to reaf­firm in the minds of the pub­lic that I am a leader who will look at the big­ger pic­ture...I will al­ways put you and the peo­ple first. "Af­ter Kam­la an­nounced her can­di­da­cy, our sup­port grew and her an­nounce­ment has done our cam­paign well." Ma­haraj en­cour­aged sup­port­ers to make do­na­tions to fi­nance his cam­paign. Stuff­ing a do­na­tion bot­tle with $10, $5 and $1 bills, he said he planned to ap­point au­di­tors to de­ter­mine how much mon­ey was raised.

Say­ing that his cam­paign would not have the back­ing of big fi­nanciers, Ma­haraj said: "In our cam­paign, we will not have big ads...They will have tele­vi­sion and ra­dio ads. "We have no big fi­nanciers who are fi­nanc­ing the cam­paign," he said. "I have al­ways tak­en the po­si­tion that I am fear­less and no fi­nancier will mort­gage me to for­sake my prin­ci­ples." He said he planned to go through­out the coun­try and "raise monies which will be put in­to a bank ac­count to fund the Oba­ma- style cam­paign." The UNC back­bencher said he planned to hold na­tion­al de­bates with mem­bers of the UNC to show why he should be elect­ed as po­lit­i­cal leader. "This is an elec­tion which we have to win," he said. "The en­tire base of the UNC is about to be changed. If I don't win and if Pan­day don't win, then the UNC will die. In this elec­tion, it is ei­ther Mr Pan­day or Ramesh who must win."