Panday, AG move apart as election nears
Where's Ramesh?
November 26, 2000
By Kim Johnson
THERE'S more to it than there appears,” said one source close to Attorney General Ramesh Maharaj, referring to the crumbling relationship between Maharaj and Prime Minister Basdeo Panday.
Although Maharaj is still in the UNC, and will run for the Couva South seat, he has hardly supported the campaign. The incumbent MP for Couva South was conspicuously absent from the UNC campaign launch and (apart from Carlos John who was overseas with an ailing relative) was the only candidate to boycott the Mid Centre Mall ceremony.
When he did attend a meeting, he arrived in time to speak, and left immediately after. The man who took second billing to Panday on the UNC campaign in the 1995 election that took the party to power, now is not even a featured speaker.
He had begun to distance himself from the party long before the campaign and now makes a point of emphasising that he performs no role in the UNC. Significantly, Maharaj has also formally told his staff goodbye at the Attorney General's Department.
It was a farewell coloured by defeat, for Maharaj's attempts to get a promised pay rise for legal officers was turned down by Cabinet last week.
The Cabinet rebuff might have been a response to Maharaj's pointedly neutral statements on the bacchanal surrounding the alleged padding of voters' lists.
Amidst Government denials that any such padding was being attempted, Maharaj said in Parliament that whoever conspired to break the law and register in one constituency while living in another, would be criminally charged.
Now that that, is indeed coming to pass, Maharaj has similarly distanced himself from his party's line on the latest controversy over the dual citizenship of Winston “Gypsy” Peters and Bill Chaitan, arguing on Friday that “it may be wrong for an Attorney General to advise private individuals, private organisations or political parties”.
Questioned last week on whether he had given any advice to the UNC on its handling of the voter padding issue, Maharaj told the Sunday Express:
“My duty is not to advise the UNC executive. My duty is to advise the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. There is a distinction between the party and the Government. It is not my duty to give any advice to the UNC as a political party. My duty is to advise the State.” Socially, Maharaj, whose 1995 T-shirt read “The Rising Son”, has found his friendship with Panday considerably cooled. When Maharaj's daughter Kavita got married, the Pandays were only invited for the official wedding, not other associated functions. The Prime Minister and his wife responded by blanking the ceremony entirely and attending a party thrown by a UNC financier.
Yet back then the two were inseparable. Maharaj had brought Panday into his law chambers, and Panday stuck by him when Maharaj appeared to be the party's main electoral liability. When Panday went off for heart surgery, it was the Maharajs who looked after his daughters.
“This thing started way back January 1997,” said a source close to the AG, without elaborating further.
That month an opinion poll identified Maharaj as Panday's most popular successor.
The first public rift appeared, however, when Maharaj defended the Deyalsingh Report's criticism of the airport contract in June 1997. Panday stated that Ish Galbaransingh, whose business methods were criticised by Deyalsingh, should be allowed to take the matter to the courts. Maharaj had argued that the Report was protected by Parliamentary privilege. Deyalsingh was at the time working as an advisor in the Ministry of the Attorney General.
“If people feel they are wronged they should have the right to go to court and seek redress,” said Panday in June, 1997, at a religious service at the Couva Mandir.
“No executive should use its power to prevent people from exercising that right,” Panday said, before the Government used its Parliamentary majority to strip the Deyalsingh report of its privilege.
That year Lynnette Maharaj, the Attorney General's wife, very pointedly told a graduating Common Entrance class at San Fernando Girls' Government School, “I have seen too many practice double standards, engage in corrupt acts, steal from their less fortunate brothers and sisters, oppress the poor and faithful and generally ride roughshod over all that is good and right and just in order to attain self-aggrandisement or position or power.”
The following month, through a Panday fiat, all Cabinet ministers—including Maharaj and Wade Mark—were excluded from posts on the UNC party executive.
Perhaps Panday's unkindest cut was delivered last September when he intervened in the bitter feud between Maharaj and Chief Justice Michael de la Bastide.
As Maharaj began turning the financial screws on de la Bastide, making it impossible for the judiciary to renew the contracts of CAT court reporters, Panday bypassed Maharaj and released the funds.
As the election approached, there was much speculation as to whether Maharaj would be a candidate. He was eventually named by Panday, in the first batch of prospective candidates who did not need to face the screening committee. It gave the impression that Maharaj, like Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Ganga Singh, was considered among the party's “performers”.
But given the AG's cryptic statements over the past week, it is not a performance likely to be repeated.
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