Richard Lord

In a sur­prise de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, dis­si­dent Tabaquite MP, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, led the re­sponse of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the de­bate on the con­tro­ver­sial An­ti-Ter­ror­ism (Amend­ment) (No 2) Bill, 2010 in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Se­nior UNC sources lat­er con­firmed that Ma­haraj's move "had the bless­ings of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Mr Pan­day, who was present in the cham­ber." The leg­is­la­tion, which was ap­proved with the re­quired three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate less than 24 hours ear­li­er, was pre­sent­ed for de­bate by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph. As Joseph was about to take his seat, Ma­haraj caught the eye of House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan, who urged him to wait a few mo­ments as he had to read out the long ti­tle of the bill be­fore al­low­ing the de­bate to pro­ceed.

Ma­haraj was re­moved as Chief Whip last year for en­gag­ing in pub­lic crit­i­cism of the Op­po­si­tion Leader. Ma­haraj was sup­port­ed then by UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, Ch­agua­nas West MP jack Warn­er and Ma­yaro MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters. All three were rel­e­gat­ed to the Op­po­si­tion back bench­es. But, in re­cent weeks, the Ram­jack (Ramesh/Jack) fac­tion was dis­band­ed as the two are now mount­ing dif­fer­ent plat­forms for Sun­day's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. With­in re­cent weeks, Ma­haraj has been speak­ing more favourably about Pan­day. Last week he said Pan­day was not the prob­lem in T&T. He al­so said there al­ways would be a role for Pan­day in the pol­i­tics of T&T.

The Op­po­si­tion's re­sponse was ex­pect­ed to have been led off ei­ther by deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Princes Town North MP Sub­has Pan­day or Pan­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar is mount­ing an ag­gres­sive chal­lenge to Pan­day's lead­er­ship in Sun­day's elec­tions. She ar­rived in the Par­lia­ment a few min­utes be­fore Joseph end­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion. The list of Op­po­si­tion speak­ers for de­bates is usu­al­ly de­ter­mined dur­ing the par­ty's par­lia­men­tary cau­cus. Sub­has Pan­day was the sec­ond Op­po­si­tion MP to con­tribute to the de­bate. Chief Whip Dr Hamza Rafeeq was ab­sent from the House yes­ter­day and Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal act­ed for him.