?Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj has de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion not to at­tend the UNC's Mon­day night fo­rum in Gas­par­il­lo.

Ma­haraj, dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said he was not in­clined to at­tend the meet­ing giv­en the pol­i­cy of the fo­rum. "The pol­i­cy for the meet­ing as an­nounced by Mr Jack Warn­er is that the MP will not be al­lowed to speak, on­ly two peo­ple will be al­lowed to speak at the meet­ing and this was the chair­man and po­lit­i­cal leader (Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar)," he said.

Ma­haraj said he was not con­sult­ed about the meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy. "The meet­ing was planned with­out me," he said. Ma­haraj said Warn­er made a pub­lic state­ment that "all per­sons who lost the elec­tion must go. It is clear to me Mr Warn­er planned this meet­ing in a way in which they did not want my par­tic­i­pa­tion." Ma­haraj said he stayed away since he want­ed to co-op­er­ate with Warn­er and Per­sad-Bisses­sar for them to have "the meet­ing as they wished."