The Con­gress of the Peo­ple has re­act­ed with alarm over the de­struc­tion of the camp of the High­way Re-Route Move­ment and the de­ten­tion of lead ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh yes­ter­day. In a me­dia re­leased is­sued by deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the COP, Anirudh Ma­habir, the po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion rec­om­mends that there be an im­me­di­ate end to this con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach and that a speedy res­o­lu­tion of this sit­u­a­tion be found by way of di­a­logue and con­sul­ta­tion.

The COP is head­ed by Prakash Ra­mad­har, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and the ma­jor coali­tion part­ner with the UNC in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. The COP state­ment said the new Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture must lead the work of the Gov­ern­ment at the high­est lev­el in this mat­ter in light of the fact that the high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin is of great im­por­tance to the econ­o­my and the re­lief of hard­ship of peo­ple liv­ing on the south-west penin­su­la.

"The sod-turn­ing for this project was done al­most 18 months ago. The Hon Em­manuel George must be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress the is­sues raised by the move­ment," the COP state­ment said. The COP al­so ex­pressed con­cern that "min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment were in­volved in es­sen­tial­ly a po­lice-mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion, giv­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of the roles of elect­ed and co­er­cive arms of the state."

The me­dia re­lease con­tin­ued: "The COP is of the view that an open and con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach to the claims of those with a dif­fer­ent point of view, in­clud­ing pro­test­ers, is more like­ly to achieve mu­tu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry and ben­e­fi­cial out­comes than vi­o­lent con­fronta­tion on ei­ther side.That is the spir­it of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ap­proach to new gov­er­nance."