Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

gail.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

May­or of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled Ari­ma Cor­po­ra­tion, Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj, says he has done noth­ing wrong in at­tend­ing last Sat­ur­day’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fundrais­er func­tion—and he’s look­ing for­ward to his re­tire­ment from busi­ness and spend­ing time with his grand­chil­dren.

“I’ve been in busi­ness for 67 years, every­one knows me, and many reach out,” Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day.

He added that the two years he had agreed to be­ing may­or were up, and he is serv­ing out the next 20 months un­til the end of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment term.

Ma­haraj, 83, heads the Ma­haraj Group of Com­pa­nies. He was ap­point­ed may­or in 2023.

Ma­haraj spoke on the is­sue af­ter queries arose in the PNM about his at­ten­dance at the UNC’s fundrais­er in Cou­va. He was pic­tured stand­ing with Sen­a­tor and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der.

One PNM mem­ber crit­i­cised it, call­ing for gen­er­al coun­cil mem­bers to say Ma­haraj’s at­ten­dance hurt PNM, and he should be re­moved as May­or.

Yes­ter­day, PNM whip Mar­vin Gon­salves said, “I don’t know why the May­or thought it was pru­dent and nec­es­sary to be at that din­ner. He prob­a­bly heard of the menu be­ing served at the event, as well as the guests present and just couldn’t re­sist his im­puls­es.”

But Gon­za­les and PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les did not re­spond to whether Ma­haraj would be re­moved.

Ma­haraj said he has “nev­er, nev­er, nev­er” been a UNC mem­ber, and as a busi­ness­man, many groups, char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions and peo­ple seek him for as­sis­tance or con­tri­bu­tions.

He said a fe­male Ari­ma UNC coun­cil­lor con­tact­ed him, sell­ing tick­ets for UNC’s event. Those cost $750. He said he’d ad­vised his Ma­haraj Group of Com­pa­nies mar­ket­ing de­part­ment to pur­chase four. He said he told the coun­cil­lor she could keep the tick­ets.

Ma­haraj said last Sat­ur­day his nephew asked him what he was do­ing that day, and when he told him “noth­ing,” his nephew showed him two tick­ets for UNC’s event, sug­gest­ing they at­tend.

Ma­haraj said they went, and he spent 90 min­utes at the event. He said he didn’t speak with the Prime Min­is­ter—whom he said he hadn’t spo­ken with for ten years —but many UNC peo­ple spoke to him, in­clud­ing some min­is­ters.

“Some asked: ‘Boy, what you do­ing here?’,” he added.

Ma­haraj said Alexan­der asked to take a pic­ture with him. He claimed the pic­ture was lat­er cir­cu­lat­ed by a busi­ness­man.

Asked about his fu­ture di­rec­tion, whether PNM or UNC, Ma­haraj said he was nev­er po­lit­i­cal but was ap­point­ed may­or.

“In Jan­u­ary, I’ll be 84. In my next jour­ney to 100, I’m go­ing to put a new board of di­rec­tors in place in my group and take a back seat from man­age­ment to spend time with my grand­chil­dren, some of whom live over­seas. I’m fo­cus­ing on that. No oth­er con­nec­tion – I can’t do it.”

Ma­haraj said he didn’t feel he’d been able to get many ne­ces­si­ties for Ari­ma.

“Ari­ma has been the for­got­ten town—I even had to pay for an of­fice for the may­or’s du­ties. We haven’t had our Ari­ma Town Hall. Out of $1.6 mil­lion owed to the con­trac­tor, the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment paid $1.3 mil­lion two months ago. I’m go­ing to do my best to get Ari­ma’s Town Hall in three months—that’s one of my wish­es for Ari­ma.”

He said the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in Ari­ma come from a PNM en­vi­ron­ment, and many get recog­nised be­cause of that con­nec­tion.

“But in Ari­ma, with my cus­tomers—PNM and UNC—I live with all of them and as a busi­ness­man, I have to be fair in op­er­a­tion and how I treat peo­ple, as the an­them says ‘every creed and race find an equal place.’ Like Gand­hi, Mar­tin Luther King and Man­dela, my wish is to see one peo­ple, one na­tion and one love,” Ma­haraj added.