UML wrote:i hope they make Anand Ramlogan a Senator
Greypatch wrote:ermm him is ah CoP..
Anand back with UNC
Richard Charan Editor South Bureau
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl ... =161605376
Tuesday, March 9th 2010
endorsed Kamla: Anand Ramlogan
Attorney Anand Ramlogan, once considered the Congress of the People’s (COP) most potent political weapon, last night appeared on the platform of the United National Congress and endorsed Kamla Persad-Bissessar as the next Prime Minister of the country.
Ramlogan, who got the second highest number of votes as a candidate for the COP in the 2007 general election, said there was a groundswell of support for Persad-Bissessar, and he intended to offer her protection against Basdeo Panday, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and others.
Ramlogan’s decision to support the new-look UNC came as a surprise to many in the COP, and followed the decision by Mervyn Assam, a COP member in the last general election, to accept a post as a UNC senator.
But Ramlogan, who lost to Maharaj in the Tabaquite constituency, said he had little choice after Persad-Bissessar dethroned Panday to become party leader in January.
He said, ’At the end of the day, the political rug is being yanked out from beneath the seat of (COP Political Leader) Winston Dookeran and the COP because they underestimate, and fail to appreciate the extent of the movement on the ground towards Kamla, across the board and including in the COP.’
Ramlogan spoke last night at a UNC public meeting at the East Indian Friendly Society building, Gasparillo, a short distance from the UNC constituency office of Maharaj.
Ramlogan, who disappeared from the political scene after his general election loss, said of the unification talks between the leaders of the COP and UNC, ’I detect an uncomfortable tone of political arrogance from some of my political brethren. Whilst I appreciate the mechanics of the unification formula, and that it needs time to be worked out, I am saying we don’t need to wait to make the fundamentals clear. And one of the things fundamental is Kamla has to be the future leader and Prime Minister of the country.’
Ramlogan said he had heard nothing of this in the unification talks ’and it is cause for worry and concern’. He said ’if the COP does not see that as the end game, I think they are approaching it from an artificial premise’.
’I still feel there are many good people in the COP who have a critical role to play in the political process, but I think the blueprint for the formula of unity must be done on the paper of the rising sun,’ he said.
Ramlogan said he was a member of the UNC and a ’political disciple of Basdeo Panday’, whom he defended in court multiple times, but left the parts in 2007 after deciding that Panday had to step aside for a new leader.
’That change has now come,’ Ramlogan said.
