A platform shared by former United National Congress (UNC) chairman and minister Jack Warner and former UNC attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj yesterday prompted hopes that another RamJack faction was in the future. The two, who formed a brief alliance back in 2009 with the Caravan for Change, spoke again about joining forces for social change in the face of public dissatisfaction with the People’s Partnership Government.
This alliance, called the Platform for Change, will see the two speaking at meetings throughout the country for social change. Maharaj described Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar as a “weak leader” who let her ministers do what they wanted regardless of the consequences. He criticised her complicit role in the unfolding “prisongate” issue and said she was wrong to allow Attorney General Anand Ramlogan to investigate his own office.
Maharaj recalled being screened to contest the Tabaquite seat in the build up to the 2010 elections and said he was denied because of a strong and vocal stand against internal corruption. Warner was already speaking and paused to ask Maharaj to tell the crowd what Persad-Bissessar asked him during the screening process. Maharaj said Persad-Bissessar asked him if there were allegations of corruption against the Prime Minister and the Government, would he stay quiet or be vocal.
“I said madam, I would be more vocal than I was years ago,” Maharaj said. “The Prime Minister is the weakest Prime Minister we have ever had, even worse than Chambers,” he said. He called on the public to be more involved in what was happening in the country, saying that the waste of taxpayers money directly affected the country. Warner, speaking after Maharaj, said a “gang of six” benefitted from the prisongate scandal.
He called on the Congress of the People to come forward and speak out against what is happening in the Government as they spoke out against him. Warner said he was going to write to the Commonwealth Secretariat regarding Ramlogan’s excesses and will also write to all the Attorneys General within the Commonwealth to inform them of Ramlogan’s behaviour. Maharaj said he was unifying with other groups to fight for social justice. “It is not a political alliance.”