Prof Hamid Ghany

In a sto­ry car­ried in last Wednes­day’s Guardian by Gail Alexan­der un­der the head­ing “More PN­Mites call for May­or’s re­moval”, it was re­port­ed that there was in­ter­nal dis­qui­et in the PNM over Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj’s at­ten­dance at the UNC Christ­mas fundrais­er din­ner two Sat­ur­days ago.

Ma­haraj hit back at his crit­ics to say that he had done noth­ing wrong by buy­ing tick­ets for the UNC fundrais­er and then at­tend­ing the din­ner spon­ta­neous­ly af­ter­wards.

The po­lit­i­cal dance in­side the PNM has start­ed over this is­sue. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ny Beck­les is quot­ed as say­ing, “Well, I mean, you know, he gave his ex­pla­na­tion. At this point in time, that is all I would com­ment on. I wouldn’t say any­thing fur­ther at this time.”

Fur­ther, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, “PNM Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les was very sar­cas­tic about Ma­haraj’s at­ten­dance at the UNC event. Oth­er mem­bers felt Ma­haraj’s ac­tions hurt PNM’s in­ter­ests.”

The po­lit­i­cal dance af­ter the din­ner will be very in­ter­est­ing to ob­serve. In an­oth­er news­pa­per, Ma­haraj com­plained about di­vi­sive­ness in the so­ci­ety, and he re­al­ly did not see any­thing wrong with so­cial­is­ing with po­lit­i­cal fig­ures on the oth­er side of the fence.

Per­haps, the is­sue that is caus­ing the ruckus is twofold. One has to do with help­ing to fund the UNC, while the oth­er has to do with him re­port­ed­ly miss­ing the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Christ­mas Din­ner, which was on the same evening.

Usu­al­ly, the PNM would take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion on mem­bers of its Leg­isla­tive Group who would vote against the par­ty or would cross the floor. At­ten­dance at a fundrais­ing din­ner would have the is­sue of fund­ing the oth­er side as its ma­jor grouse.

It will be very in­ter­est­ing to see how the PNM is go­ing to han­dle this. May­or Ma­haraj is an al­der­man on the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and was elect­ed may­or by a ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­cil­lors and al­der­men ow­ing to the fact that the PNM con­trols that cor­po­ra­tion. Of course, adding fur­ther spice to the post-din­ner po­lit­i­cal dance is the fact that Ari­ma is the con­stituen­cy rep­re­sent­ed by none oth­er than the po­lit­i­cal leader her­self.

May­or Ma­haraj is a sea­soned busi­ness­man and a lat­ter-day politi­cian. He ob­vi­ous­ly knew that at­tend­ing a UNC fundrais­ing din­ner would raise more than just eye­brows. The Guardian sto­ry was quite sub­stan­tial, and Gail Alexan­der seemed to be cap­tur­ing a deep-seat­ed anger among the peo­ple she spoke with in com­pil­ing the sto­ry. There was a lot of gran­u­lar de­tail in it that spoke about the in­ter­nal dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dure that can be adopt­ed in the par­ty as well as ac­tions that could be tak­en in the cor­po­ra­tion.

May­or Ma­haraj used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell Alexan­der that Ari­ma was a “for­got­ten town”. That was clear­ly a blow to the PNM, as the UNC does not con­trol the bor­ough, and they came to pow­er in the cen­tral gov­ern­ment on­ly at the end of April this year. The last lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion was held in Au­gust 2023 by or­der of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.

In the sto­ry, the fol­low­ing ref­er­ence was made: “There have been ques­tions about whether Beck­les would deal with Ma­haraj, as it’s been not­ed that his mat­ter is sim­i­lar to the De­cem­ber 2013 is­sue when Beck­les was a PNM sen­a­tor/la­dy vice chair­man and was crit­i­cised by PN­Mites for at­tend­ing a cur­ry duck lime spon­sored by UNC deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal.”

It is an in­ter­est­ing an­gle as it re­lates to ca­ma­raderie among politi­cians across the po­lit­i­cal di­vide with each oth­er on a so­cial ba­sis. How­ev­er, Mooni­lal was not host­ing a fundrais­er but just a “cur­ry duck lime”.

The PNM now has to de­cide how to treat with this mat­ter. Will the dance that comes af­ter the din­ner lead to Ma­haraj’s re­moval as May­or of Ari­ma? Or will Ma­haraj, as a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man, just walk away from it all and not sub­ject him­self to the in­ter­nal snip­ing that has erupt­ed?

Many peo­ple nev­er thought that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar would ever see the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in this coun­try again. They were wrong. The ef­fect of that on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape has seen many peo­ple in­side and out­side the UNC, who doubt­ed her po­lit­i­cal for­ti­tude, hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about what the po­lit­i­cal land­scape is go­ing to look like af­ter the dev­as­ta­tion suf­fered by the PNM last April.

The PNM has a cal­cu­la­tion to make. Does it avoid pok­ing the po­lit­i­cal bear on this is­sue and avoid any risk of some frac­tur­ing, or does it read the ri­ot act and take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against Ma­haraj for his so­cial evening at a UNC fundrais­ing din­ner?

Which ac­tion will the PNM take?

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of the UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.