Arima mayor in more hot water

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford has called on par­ty leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to safe­guard the par­ty ahead of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions by re­mov­ing Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj.

His call fol­lows crit­i­cism from Ari­ma burgess Flloyd Her­nan­dez over Ma­haraj’s use of the may­oral plat­form to pro­mote per­son­al ac­tiv­i­ties.

This is the lat­est is­sue af­fect­ing Ma­haraj with­in the par­ty.

Ma­haraj pre­vi­ous­ly drew neg­a­tive at­ten­tion with­in the PNM for at­tend­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) fundrais­ing din­ner on De­cem­ber 13, while fail­ing to at­tend his cor­po­ra­tion’s Christ­mas func­tion on the same night.

He de­fend­ed his at­ten­dance, and de­spite sev­er­al calls for his re­moval, no ac­tion was tak­en by the par­ty lead­er­ship.

More re­cent­ly, Ma­haraj used his of­fi­cial may­oral plat­form to high­light his at­ten­dance at the open­ing of a Guyanese restau­rant along­side Guyana’s pres­i­dent and busi­ness­man Derek Chin.

He al­so post­ed about re­ceiv­ing Over­seas Cit­i­zen of In­dia (OCI) iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, Her­nan­dez, in a Face­book post, strong­ly crit­i­cised Ma­haraj’s use of the may­oral plat­form, de­scrib­ing it as a “van­i­ty cha­rade.”

He called on the may­or to out­line a clear vi­sion for Ari­ma and ad­dress the bor­ough’s cur­rent state and di­rec­tion.

“Notwith­stand­ing the ef­fort of a cou­ple coun­cil­lors, Ari­ma is col­laps­ing un­der the weight of non-per­for­mance, in­com­pe­tence and in­dif­fer­ence from the coun­cil and cor­po­ra­tion in gen­er­al, and the of­fice of May­or in par­tic­u­lar,” Her­nan­dez said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing Ma­haraj’s right to en­joy the fruits of his labour, Her­nan­dez said he failed to see the rel­e­vance of the may­or’s posts re­gard­ing the restau­rant open­ing and OCI sta­tus, and how they ad­vanced Ari­ma’s in­ter­ests.

He asked: “What ini­tia­tives have you pre­sent­ed in Ari­ma’s in­ter­est? What trans­for­ma­tion has tak­en place un­der your stew­ard­ship?”

Ma­haraj did not re­spond to What­sApp queries seek­ing com­ment.

Beck­les and PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings al­so did not re­spond to queries re­gard­ing Her­nan­dez’s com­plaints or Ford’s call for Ma­haraj’s re­moval.

Ford out­lined his con­cerns in a let­ter to Cum­mings, al­though the mat­ter was not raised at last Sat­ur­day’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing.

He said the PNM must close­ly mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion in Ari­ma as it pre­pares for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

“The may­or has shown no re­morse for at­tend­ing the UNC’s De­cem­ber func­tion, while the PNM’s lead­er­ship con­tin­ues to re­main silent. What dis­re­spect! It is there­fore in­cum­bent up­on me to call on the lead­er­ship—al­beit late—to act. The longer Ma­haraj re­mains in of­fice, the hard­er it will be to jus­ti­fy our fail­ure to ad­dress the mat­ter,” Ford said.

“This is not an at­tack on the leader or the lead­er­ship, but sim­ply an ef­fort to bring the facts be­fore the par­ty so de­ci­sive ac­tion can be tak­en. Fail­ure to act will make it ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue pro­claim­ing ‘Great is the PNM... and we shall pre­vail,’” he warned.

In his let­ter, Ford de­scribed the lead­er­ship’s re­sponse to the is­sue as “ex­treme­ly strange,” not­ing that the par­ty’s con­tin­ued si­lence was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand giv­en its his­tor­i­cal record of ad­dress­ing sim­i­lar mat­ters.

Ref­er­enc­ing Beck­les’ Jan­u­ary as­sur­ance of de­ci­sive lead­er­ship, Ford added: “To date, how­ev­er, the ab­sence of ac­tion tells a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry.”

He not­ed that the PNM had pre­vi­ous­ly act­ed swift­ly in sit­u­a­tions per­ceived to af­fect its rep­u­ta­tion, cit­ing cas­es in­volv­ing for­mer D’Abadie/O’Meara MP An­cil An­toine, for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee, for­mer Ari­ma may­or Per­cy Cezair, for­mer MPs Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, Frankie Khan and Er­ic Williams, as well as an apol­o­gy by To­ba­go As­sem­bly­man Hilton Sandy.

Ford fur­ther claimed that Ma­haraj does not func­tion un­der the PNM’s ban­ner in Ari­ma and Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca.

“He’s nev­er set foot in any of the sev­en elec­toral dis­tricts. Coun­cil­lors and MPs reg­u­lar­ly walk the dis­tricts, but the may­or has nev­er ac­com­pa­nied them,” Ford said.

He al­so al­leged that Ma­haraj, who was re­moved from a may­ors/chair­men chat group, has dis­played a “mav­er­ick” lead­er­ship style.

Ac­cord­ing to Ford, while PNM coun­cil­lors were in­struct­ed not to re­spond to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter’s re­quest re­gard­ing con­stituen­cy bound­ary changes, Ma­haraj sub­mit­ted rec­om­men­da­tions to the min­is­ter.

Ford said he could at­test to these is­sues, hav­ing served as Ma­haraj’s per­son­al as­sis­tant un­til No­vem­ber 2024, when he re­signed “be­cause he was not heed­ing con­cerns and ad­vice on at­tend­ing to PNM busi­ness.”

“Be­cause he reached out to me and top of­fi­cials asked me to re­turn, I did,” Ford added, not­ing that his con­tract end­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2025.