Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

Today's Express editorial takes on former "human rights lawyer", former UNC attorney general, present National Team Unity leader Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who's been trying to earn himself some press time lately:

Mr. Maharaj held his press conference on Monday ... he alleged a plan by the Manning administration to implement a State of Emergency in April to deal with the crime situation.

Mr. Maharaj, who claimed to have received his information from reliable sources, also went on to state that the Prime Minister would seek to ensure the election of a puppet president to achieve his ends, and with even greater hyperbole predicted that "Prime Minister Manning intends to use these states of emergency to attempt to silence politicians, trade unions — and during that period of time — intends to sell State assets to private enterprises."

(What, & not steal from little kiddies' piggybanks too?)

These are fanciful charges even by Mr. Maharaj's own standards, made even more remarkable by the failure of the former Attorney General to present any evidence whatsoever to back them up. As his erstwhile UNC colleagues have pointed out, Mr. Maharaj went to great lengths to ensure Mr. Manning assumed office; it is difficult to believe he would have done so with so little faith in the Prime Minister's democratic credentials.

Maharaj has shifted positions, policies & allegiances so often in the past that nothing he could say or do now would be genuinely surprising. He's exposed himself as a boldfaced opportunist a few times too many, even by T&T's political standards. I personally don't trust him enough to leave him in a room by himself. Yet he clearly still nurses hopes of being Basdeo Panday's political successor, &, God help us, he actually has some kind of support base. Panday himself, of course, is the man who could take Maharaj out once & for all — but does he want to? Does he still have the fire & the fury? From the safe distance of London, is he assembling a crafty plan for a dramatic comeback, or has he given up this time? (These days I'm just slightly missing the political bacchanal of the last year & a half — is that obvious?)