Ramesh announces new party again

FORMER UNC attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who formed Team Unity after leaving the UNC, formally announced the formation of a new political party during a meeting at Gulf City Auditorium on Thursday evening. Maharaj, who is not a newcomer to forming political organisations, seemed this time around to be heading for bigger stakes with close to 1,000 people turning out for the launch of his new party — “The New Vision to effect Social Transformation and National Redemption in Trinidad and Tobago by Causing Political Transformation.”

Squatter regularisation and 9,000 retrenched sugar workers, Maharaj’s current pet topic, featured in his one-hour speech. Maharaj wondered how “flying fish” could have brokered such camaraderie between Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday and not the retrenchment of 9,000 workers who were sent home in “one swipe.” In reference to two other Manning/Panday meetings held recently, Maharaj quipped, “nine thousand workers fired and Caroni closed down. Food crop farmers land taken away to build NHA houses. Manning and Panday did not meet on that.” Maharaj told the audience that Parliament had become a “gentleman’s club” in which the Government had become the Opposition, and the Opposition the Government.

Maharaj, whose breakaway from the then United National Congress government led to that party losing power in 2,000, outlined the principles his new party will be founded on in a seven-page White Paper document. The document was distributed among the audience with Maharaj announcing that, in the next six to nine months, he will be explaining it at meetings to be held throughout the country. A national convention will be held, he added, to determine how the new party unfolds for the next general election. During the meeting, no other members of Maharaj’s other political party — Team Unity — were present, nor did he state if he was dissolving Team Unity or amalgamating it with the new political party.