While Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Whip David Lee says ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj is act­ing on his own in re­leas­ing Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters' cell­phone num­bers, Lee is not con­demn­ing Ma­haraj's ac­tion.

Lee con­firmed this in re­ply­ing to T&T Guardian queries on Ma­haraj's re­cent threat to re­lease all min­is­ters' cell­phone num­bers so cit­i­zens can call and hold them ac­count­able. Last week­end, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley com­plained that the cir­cu­la­tion of his num­ber caused him to re­ceive abu­sive mes­sages. But when Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young's num­ber was is­sued last Sun­day, Young ig­nored it, say­ing he was fo­cused on his work.

And yes­ter­day when Ma­haraj re­leased Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia's num­ber urg­ing par­ents of "Bel­mont Pri­ma­ry School" stu­dents to call Gar­cia on the "un­ac­cept­able" school con­di­tions, Gar­cia al­so shrugged off Ma­haraj's move.

Gar­cia said, "The gen­tle­man's ig­no­rance is brought on by the fact he named a school that doesn't ex­ist - there's no Bel­mont Pri­ma­ry school. There's on­ly Bel­mont Boys' and Girls' RC pri­ma­ry schools and Bel­mont Gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry school. He ob­vi­ous­ly doesn't know what he's talk­ing about.

"There­fore I have no in­ten­tion of tak­ing on De­vant Ma­haraj and his non­sense. I've served in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment for five years and it was manda­to­ry for all lo­cal gov­ern­ment prac­ti­tion­ers to make their phone num­bers avail­able to burgess­es since coun­cil­lors are clos­est to the 'ground'. As Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter I didn't change that pol­i­cy and my num­ber is avail­able to any­body. I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to my con­stituen­cy and if one area of ser­vice is by means of phone, I have no prob­lem with that at all."

How does the par­ty which Ma­haraj be­longs to feel about his a dai­ly "out­ing" of min­is­ters' num­bers?

Lee said Ma­haraj as an ac­tivist acts on his own and the UNC wasn't in on his re­cent cell­phone"shar­ing" ex­er­cise.

"Ma­haraj is an ac­tivist, just like a Kirk Wait­he (Fix­ing T&T), he's fight­ing for the peo­ple so he seems to be do­ing what he feels he has to...it has noth­ing to do with UNC.

"...did we sanc­tion what he's do­ing? Well, my cell­phone as Pointe-a-Pierre MP, as all my oth­er col­leagues' num­bers, are on the of­fi­cial let­ter­heads of our cor­re­spon­dence. I don't hide. We're all pub­lic fig­ures, elect­ed to serve the peo­ple."

He added, "Gov­ern­ment's protests on this may be geared to try­ing to change the nar­ra­tive away from na­tion­al is­sues: ram­pant crime, Petrotrin fall­out, job­less­ness and eco­nom­ic is­sues. It's go­ing to be a sour Christ­mas for many. Mr Ma­haraj may or may not get sup­port from peo­ple, but many av­er­age cit­i­zens are con­cerned about what's re­al­ly hap­pen­ing in T&T. But the Gov­ern­ment feels great enough to plan on hav­ing cock­tails on Fri­day (at Stollmey­er's Cas­tle) - it's in­sen­si­tive.

"Fri­day is tra­di­tion­al­ly Par­lia­ment. We haven't heard yet if there's any sit­ting that day. So we're wait­ing to see if Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to put cock­tail par­ty ahead of the peo­ple's con­cerns."

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath didn't agree with Ma­haraj's wide cir­cu­la­tion of num­bers.

"If he want­ed to give it to one or two peo­ple, fine, but pub­lish­ing it this gen­er­al way opens it up to mis­use of the num­bers. But De­vant Ma­haraj is De­vant Ma­haraj and he'll al­ways do what­ev­er he can to cre­ate what­ev­er up­set he thinks is achiev­able," Ra­goonath said.