Sascha Wil­son

A group call­ing them­selves Sec­tion 34 is ap­peal­ing to ex-politi­cians to awake from their po­lit­i­cal slum­ber and help them form a pow­er­ful po­lit­i­cal par­ty to res­cue the coun­try from cri­sis. Say­ing the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion was steer­ing the coun­try down an abyss, the group has called on for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, for­mer sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah, for­mer MP Mick­ela Pan­day and even stroke-strick­en for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to join the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

A press con­fer­ence was held on Thurs­day in San Fer­nan­do to in­tro­duce the five-mem­ber group, which com­pris­es an­i­mal rights ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza, East Port-of-Spain ac­tivist Hazel Smith, busi­ness­man Har­ry Roodal, sci­en­tif­ic as­sis­tant Ronald Bho­la and Richard Ra­goo­nanan. De Souza, who leads the group, said her or­gan­i­sa­tion hoped po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Prakash Ra­mad­har and for­mer leader Win­ston Dook­er­an would join them.

Say­ing that of all the lead­ers Pan­day was the best, she said, "Bring Pan­day back." She said the group want­ed cit­i­zens, in­ter­est groups, busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions to join them. She said they would be walk­ing from Ce­dros to Port-of-Spain to mo­bilise peo­ple. Asked how they in­tend­ed to get the re­tired politi­cians to come for­ward, she said, "We are telling them they have to come for­ward to give a con­tri­bu­tion."