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Saturday, July 12, 2025

UNC claims election witch hunt behind Ram’s arrest

by

Gail Alexander
2242 days ago
20190522
Mayaro/Rio Claro Regional Corporation chairman Glen Ram.

Mayaro/Rio Claro Regional Corporation chairman Glen Ram.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

A po­lit­i­cal elec­tion-year witch hunt, says the Op­po­si­tion UNC.

But si­lence from the rul­ing PNM. Those were the re­ac­tions to the ar­rest of UNC Ma­yaro/Rio Claro cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Glen Ram yes­ter­day in con­nec­tion with an al­le­ga­tion of so­lic­it­ing a $1,500 bribe from a con­trac­tor.

A state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice con­firmed a coun­cil­lor was ar­rest­ed at the cor­po­ra­tion and “was ex­pect­ed” to be charged with al­leged­ly cor­rupt­ly agree­ing to and re­ceiv­ing a $1,500 bribe in June 2018.

Cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials said An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau of­fi­cers who came to the cor­po­ra­tion re­quest­ed Ram, 46, to ac­com­pa­ny them. He was asked to leave be­hind per­son­al be­long­ings- cell phone, wal­let etc—and tak­en to ACIB’s Port-of-Spain of­fice for ques­tion­ing.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein said he had “got­ten wind” of the sit­u­a­tion af­ter leav­ing a San­gre Grande func­tion yes­ter­day, but could not com­ment.

How­ev­er, UNC whip David Lee said, “The UNC doesn’t stand for any wrong do­ing and all cit­i­zens are de­serv­ing of due process, jus­tice and fair-play. But this has all the clear mark­ings of what’s emerged in re­cent weeks as the PNM’s elec­tion year lock up plan which they’ve been talk­ing about. It’s ap­par­ent­ly their on­ly clear strat­e­gy to win elec­tions. “

“It’s ob­vi­ous the PNM is un­der pres­sure. Per­haps they feel this is a way they can win the Ma­yaro cor­po­ra­tion which they cov­et. They prob­a­bly feel if they can take down a UNC per­son every week, they have a chance - but they’re seem to be grasp­ing at straws. There’s been an on­go­ing nar­ra­tive by the PNM, in and out of Par­lia­ment that they were go­ing ‘lock some­body up.’ In re­cent weeks we’ve seen the be­gin­ning of this plan tak­ing hold. It would al­so be the height of naivety to ig­nore the fact that this is an elec­tion year.”

“We re­call that be­fore the 2002 elec­tions they charged sev­en UNC mem­bers in­clud­ing Bas­deo Pan­day, Fin­bar Gan­ga and Dr Tim Gopeesingh, and items were found in min­is­ter Sadiq Baksh’s wa­ter tank - so there’s a his­to­ry of this be­hav­iour. But the peo­ple have seen and felt what life is like un­der this Row­ley Gov­ern­ment and they’re fed up, frus­trat­ed, and an­gry.”

Lee said he found it cu­ri­ous that Wednes­day’s de­vel­op­ment oc­curred af­ter the Privy Coun­cil/Mal­colm Jones rul­ing which had gen­er­at­ed wide dis­cus­sion.

“The PNM has at­tempt­ed dis­trac­tion af­ter dis­trac­tion to de­flect at­ten­tion from their in­com­pe­tence. We wouldn’t be sur­prised if they use every tool at their dis­pos­al to con­tin­ue these at­tempts. But UNC re­mains fo­cused on hold­ing them ac­count­able to the peo­ple.”

Sources said yes­ter­day, let­ters mak­ing cer­tain al­le­ga­tions had been sent by a per­son from Ma­yaro to var­i­ous high-lev­el state of­fi­cials last year.

Ram has been a coun­cil­lor for over 20 years. He rep­re­sents the Charu­ma/Biche dis­trict. He re­cent­ly put in his nom­i­na­tion for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls when UNC’s nom­i­na­tions closed in April.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment sources said if Ram was charged he didn’t have to step down as a coun­cil­lor since he was elect­ed. But they said the par­ty will have to make a call on whether he stays as cor­po­ra­tion chair­man, if charged. If he steps down, cor­po­ra­tion vice chair­man—Vedaish Ma­haraj—will act as chair­man un­til elec­tions.

Ram ap­peared last month be­fore a Par­lia­men­tary Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee—with of­fi­cials of oth­er cor­po­ra­tions—in an in­quiry in­to Fi­nan­cial Over­sight and Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tems at Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions. Among in­for­ma­tion, Ma­yaro/Rio Claro cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials said a do­na­tion reg­is­ter was cre­at­ed to record pub­lic do­na­tions in re­sponse to the 2018 floods and the cor­po­ra­tion doesn’t ac­cept mon­e­tary do­na­tions from pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als.


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