MSM-MMM By-Election Candidate Thrown out before Nomination Day
06.11.2003
During Lalit's Thursday, 6th November press conference, Ram Seegobin, in answer to a question from the Press on the MSM-MMM by-election candidate, Dr. Hurry's sudden "desisting" said that it was a "nightmare" for a political party to have a candidate withdraw. And if the party is the Government Party, the nightmare is "phantasmagoric", he said. He added that he thought it was not so much a case of "desisting" voluntarily, but more like the VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme), whereby the Sugar Estate bosses "force" labourers to take supposedly voluntary retirement. He said it looked very much as though the MSM-MMM had had to sack him.
He explained that LALIT had had a good leaflet distribution last Sunday in the constituency where there is the by-election, and that the new candidate into the breach for MSM-MMM, Prakash Mantoora had had a hard time at a private meeting the night before, when a member of the public was asking about unemployment, as Lalit had suggested people should do.
Ram Seegobin added that the whole episode is an embarassment for the MSM, again humiliated by the MMM, as Prakash Mantoora is very much an MMM and a Bérenger man, as well as being a World Bank man. Ram Seegobin added that this explained Paul Bérenger's remarkable comment after the debacle that he is "enchanté" by Mantoora's candidature.
