A Chaguanas Borough Corporation councillor has confessed to helping former Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner to remove Surujrattan Rambachan as mayor of Chaguanas in 2009. Seeking forgiveness at the Congress of the People’s (COP) public meeting on Tuesday night at Gaston Courts, Chaguanas, Narsingh Rambarran said: “I apologise for what I did.”
Asked by T&T Guardian afterwards how he supported Warner then, Rambarran said Warner told him he had the support of three PNM councillors and one UNC councillor to vote against Rambachan in the elections of mayors and aldermen but he also needed Rambarran’s support. He said he agreed to vote against Rambachan after Warner assured him he would have a bright political future.
Rambachan, who had served as mayor for six years, was subsequently unseated when five of the eight councillors voted against him. He was replaced by Natasha Navas, the first woman to serve as a mayor of Chaguanas. Rambarran, the Enterprise North representative, said months later “I knew I was misled into doing something that would hamper me and hamper T&T in the long run.”
However, he said, Warner, who had made several promises to him, including making him deputy mayor in return for his support, betrayed him. Warner, he said, promised his political future would be “brighter than what it is.” Instead, he said, in 2010 he was abused and chastised by UNC members for being a member of the COP.
The COP Chaguanas meeting was held to garner support for the UNC candidate Khadijah Ameen, who is going up against Warner in Monday’s Chaguanas West by-election. Warner formed his own Independent Liberal Party after being rejected as a candidate by the UNC’s screening committee.
The other candidates in the race are Avinash Singh (People’s National Movement), Dr Kirk Meighoo (Democratic National Assembly) and Oliver Norman (National Coalition for Transformation). PIMP candidate Ishmael Samad has pulled out.