FOUR months ago, Anderson Straker, son of popular Mayaro-born Calypsonian/politician Winston “Gypsy” Peters visited TnT Mirror’s office to inform the public that, like Moses, he was preparing Mayaro for the return of his father.

As fate would have it, the 37-year-old former Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) co-ordinator under the United National Congress (UNC) Government and “influential person” in the Mayaro district during his dad’s tenure, has had his budding political career cut short.

Last Wednesday morning, Straker a father of four, of Pierreville, Mayaro, appeared before Magistrate Lee Ann Lee Lim in the Port of Spain Magistrates’ Court charged with the murder of kidnapped United States Army veteran, Balliram “Balo” Maharaj.

ANDERSON STRAKER
at Mirror’s office.

Also charged with him were Maharaj’s ex-wife, Doreen Alexander-Durity, of Arima and Santa Cruz resident, Zion Clarke. It was last April that Maharaj, who was at the time vacationing in Trinidad, was reportedly kidnapped outside an Aranguez bar, and a $3 million ransom demanded.

Last Monday, Maharaj’s dismembered body was discovered in two containers, in two separate graves in the Santa Cruz forest.

Straker, who described himself as “my father’s eldest son”, and who is well-known to all and sundry as “Gypsy’s boy and right-hand man in Mayaro”, had hoped to stem the war and violence brewing in the community.

He blamed the distribution of jobs in the Community Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) and URP for the breakdown in the community.

He said when his dad was in charge, the wealth of the town had trickled down to everyone.

He also told Mirror that MP Franklin Khan had around him “violent people who walk around with guns and knives and will stop at nothing to stay in control”.

Straker had pledged to clean up the town. But only now that he has been arrested and charged with murder that Gypsy has publicly denied that Straker is his biological son.

Gypsy told reporters he had, however, raised him as his own son.