COP member and former Chaguanas West MP Manohar Ramsaran is not averse to contesting the by-election for the seat as a PP candidate once there is consensus among the partners. Ramsaran, 63, said so yesterday. He was Chaguanas West MP for 12 years from 1995 to 2007 when former MP Jack Warner was put to fight the seat for the UNC and defeated Ramsaran, who was by then with the COP.
Government is yet to finalise a date for the by-election, sources said. UNC’s Rienzi Complex Complex secretariat said the UNC’s national executive would meet on the issue after which the partnership would decide and a date would be announced. At last week’s UNC forum, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar quipped she had no “back pocket” in which to hold a date as her predecessor Patrick Manning often quipped that he had.
Persad-Bissessar said UNC deputy leader Roodal Moonilal had told her she had a handbag. PP officials said the date would be announced in due course. UNC secretariat officials said the party’s executive would examine the issue of nominees along with the partners. Last week COP leadership officials said COP had several nominees to be discussed among PP leaders.
Ramsaran, speaking about his interest, said: “People have been urging me to get involved. I believe the partners should get together and have consensus on a candidate. That’s the only way I will consider being a nominee. “If there’s consensus and I have a chance I will not mind accepting. I represented that seat for 12 years and I believe I performed well. People may have forgotten but my legacy was not box drains and pavements but schools and such achievements.”
Ramsaran said he first won the seat in 1995 for the UNC with 17,000 votes. He said he twice defeated Ian Alleyne, who went up for the PNM in the 2000 and 2001 elections. He defeated an attorney the PNM presented in 2002 then lost to Warner who was UNC’s candidate in 2007.
By 2007 a split occurred in the UNC and Ramsaran and others, including Winston Dookeran, went on the Parliament backbench and distanced themselves from the UNC. They later formed the COP. When Ramsaran went up for Chaguanas West in 2007 for the COP he was defeated by Warner, whom former UNC leader Basdeo Panday put to fight that seat.
Ramsaran said: “Warner got over 11,000 votes in 2007 and I got around 6,000. For the 2010 poll when the Partnership formed, I, as a COP member, helped him campaign and he won it with 18,000 votes. I also helped Warner there for the last local government election.”
