The Op­po­si­tion UNC will have a new Sen­a­tor in the Sen­ate this af­ter­noon fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of UNC’s Ger­ald Ramdeen on Monday.

Ramdeen ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pri­or to his 9 am ap­pear­ance in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court. The res­ig­na­tion was ac­cept­ed.

Ramdeen and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan were charged with cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed of­fences last Fri­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar who has main­tained the de­ci­sion to charge Ramdeen and Ram­lo­gan were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed be­cause of up­com­ing elec­tions, spoke about the sit­u­a­tion dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment tea-break.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said if Ramdeen had not of­fered to re­sign the post, she would have re­quest­ed it of him.

“It is keep­ing with the man­ner I have al­ways op­er­at­ed in pub­lic of­fice. So I think he did the right thing in that I didn’t have to re­quest it, he sent it. I re­ceived it some­time ear­li­er to­day,” said Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, did not say if his re­place­ment would be named be­fore to­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting.

“In due course, we will share with you our re­place­ment for the Sen­ate,” said Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

She al­so was not clear if Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen would con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in le­gal mat­ters.

“I can’t say at the mo­ment, there are sev­er­al mat­ters in which they are coun­sel on record, lawyers on record so we shall see based on what hap­pens in the cir­cum­stances whether they will have the same amount of time to de­vote to those mat­ters that are be­fore the court,” said the UNC leader.

“That will be a mat­ter for them and not for us, ba­si­cal­ly their time will be­come cir­cum­scribed. They are good lawyers, there is no ques­tion they are good lawyers. They have won many cas­es in the courts, I have no prob­lems with their ca­pa­bil­i­ties as lawyers.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said with re­gard to crim­i­nal al­le­ga­tions, she has al­ways asked her mem­bers to leave their posts and prove their in­no­cence.

“I have al­ways tak­en a par­tic­u­lar kind of ap­proach when I was in gov­ern­ment, out­side I have con­tin­ued to take that ap­proach. It was clear your name and come back. This is not un­usu­al,” she said.

Ram­lo­gan had re­signed from his post as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al while cur­rent Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith was dis­missed from his post of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Feb­ru­ary 2015 amid a wit­ness tam­per­ing scan­dal in­volv­ing Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor David West. It is al­leged that West was con­tact­ed to with­draw his state­ment in a defama­tion case against PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Ram­lo­gan was charged in 2017 in re­la­tion to that case, which is still be­fore the court.

In 2014, Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts re­signed his post as Min­is­ter of Sport, amid mount­ing con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the con­tentious Life­S­port Pro­gramme and its pos­si­ble link to fraud­u­lent and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ramdeen has not been avail­able for com­ment.

Last Tues­day—be­fore Ramdeen was de­tained by po­lice for ques­tion­ing—he was not present in the Sen­ate and at­tor­ney Bri­an Baig act­ed in his ab­sence on the Op­po­si­tion bench.

Be­cause of the Sen­ate’s de­bate to­day on liquor li­cence leg­is­la­tion, the Op­po­si­tion had al­so al­ready sched­uled an­oth­er at­tor­ney to par­tic­i­pate in de­bate of this mat­ter.