Gail Alexan­der

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Cou­va North ex­ec­u­tive has made it clear that it’s sup­port­ing new can­di­date Ravi Rati­ram and is not part of the group lob­by­ing for out­go­ing MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al.

Cou­va North ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Or­lan­do Nages­sar, cit­ing a head­line yes­ter­day about peo­ple lob­by­ing for Ram­di­al, said ac­tivist Ra­jesh Rat­tan and oth­ers call­ing for Ram­di­al to be re­in­stat­ed were part of the out­go­ing MP’s of­fice staff. He said al­though there was ini­tial dis­ap­point­ment that Ram­di­al hadn’t been cho­sen, the ex­ec­u­tive had ful­ly ral­lied be­hind re­place­ment Rati­ram.

“We’re walk­ing with him. The ex­ec­u­tive is be­hind him,” Nages­sar said yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Rat­tan is­sued re­leas­es and sought a meet­ing with the par­ty lead­er­ship to have Ram­di­al re­turned to the can­di­da­cy. He con­firmed yes­ter­day that he didn’t get the re­quest­ed meet­ing and said the group will wait un­til to­day.

Nages­sar yes­ter­day said Ram­di­al isn’t walk­ing with Rati­ram but was walk­ing with the par­ty’s La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro can­di­date.

UNC Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la coun­cil­lors, who had a clash with can­di­date Dr Rai Rag­bir last Fri­day and walked out of a meet­ing af­ter they tried to bring at­ten­tion to an is­sue, met with top par­ty of­fi­cials on Mon­day in San­gre Grande. A spokesman said fol­low­ing that meet­ing the coun­cil­lors will walk with Rag­bir now. Out­go­ing MP Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein hasn’t walked with Rag­bir.

The Ca­roni Cen­tral team has al­so ral­lied be­hind their new can­di­dates al­though ini­tial­ly, con­stituents were up­set that MP Bhoe Tewarie had been re­placed.

Tewarie went on a walk­a­bout with his re­place­ment Arnold Ram on Mon­day, passed on a UNC flag and gave the new can­di­date a copy of his con­stituen­cy’s mag­a­zine, Stay­ing In Touch.