FORMER Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj is being accused of crying the most “crocodile tears” for disgraced former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday.

According to a veteran politician from the United National Congress (UNC), it is hypocritical, because it is Maharaj who took Panday to his political deathbed.

“It is truly amazing what is going on here,” the UNC informant confided to TnT Mirror on Monday night following the emergency meeting at Reinzi Complex to address Panday’s guilty verdict and two-year jail sentence imposed by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls.

“Ramesh is talking like he is on the verge of tears, but it is he who benefits the most from Panday being in jail.

“I don’t understand why there is all this conflict with the Political Leader (Winston Dookeran) when Panday has no other to blame than his former attorney general.

“Who leaked the information about the London flat and the London bank accounts?

“Who had intimate knowledge of the Panday’s business dealings?

“Who led the PNM to Oma’s bank account?

“Who leaked the story to reporter Francis Joseph at Newsday?

“How did Joseph travel to London to take photographs of Panday’s apartment and break the story?”

The UNC insider then added: “How soon we forget. Ramesh is a seasoned attorney, he knows the score.

“The former attorney general is very close to the lead prosecutor (Sir Timothy Cassell). He (Cassell) got enough briefs from the State when Ramesh was attorney general.

“And don’t forget, Ramesh’s two children who studied law in England both trained in Cassell’s chambers in London.

“As an experienced lawyer and former attorney general, Ramesh must have known the difficulty Panday was in, based on the evidence, so it seems a little strange to see him crying the hardest over the verdict.

“Yet, UNC supporters are happily running around Reinzi Complex boasting that ‘Ramesh is back’.

“This is so ironic.”

The insider also lamented the poor turn-out of UNC supporters for the meeting on Monday night and said this probably signals an end of an era in Trinidad and Tobago politics.

“Panday is on his political deathbed and his constituency is also dying,” the informant declared.

“Look at the people who are here tonight. So few of them are young people; they are no longer interested.

“The children and grandchildren of the cane-cutter have been educated, they are not toiling in the fields and they have a different perspective on all of this.

“They are embarrassed by what is going on because the Indo-Trinidadian is failing badly in the eyes of the public.

“Look at the indiscipline from the UNC head table, when the political leader arrived.

“I suspect people do not want to see this rift heal so we are going to witness a very ugly episode of local politics.

“There is no one with the charisma to smoothen the feathers and mend the fences; we (Indo-Trinis) are looking like a bunch of rabble rousers.

“I have seen a few things in politics in this country during the years I have served, but this takes the cake.”