Leah So­rias

COP mem­ber and for­mer UNC min­is­ter Manohar Ram­saran says he has no doubt that a coali­tion gov­ern­ment would work in T&T.

"I sup­port the coali­tion ful­ly, it is a very in­ter­est­ing sit­u­a­tion," he said yes­ter­day. "We are in a po­si­tion that we could win and this last week of cam­paign­ing will be very im­por­tant."

Ram­saran un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the Ch­agua­nas West seat against the UNC's Jack Warn­er, in the last gen­er­al elec­tion. Be­fore that, he was MP for Ch­agua­nas un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment, as well as Min­is­ter of Sport. Dur­ing his 2007 elec­tion cam­paign, Ram­saran ob­ject­ed to the idea of a UNC/COP coali­tion. "It's not about the par­ties, it's about the peo­ple (who would keep the coali­tion to­geth­er)," he said yes­ter­day. "I think the peo­ple who make up the coali­tion will work and the UNC-coali­tion would be vic­to­ri­ous."

Ram­saran said in T&T's his­to­ry, coali­tions had last­ed, de­spite fric­tion among peo­ple in­volved. He said his main wor­ry was vi­o­lence dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign which, he said, could heat up in the next few days. "I see a very close race in some of the con­stituen­cies, but I want to urge peo­ple to leave the cam­paign­ing to the politi­cians," he said. "I ask the pop­u­la­tion to keep their emo­tions down and to stay away from any vi­o­lence."