ANI­KA GUMBS-SAN­DI­FORD

Ari­ma May­or Ghas­san Youseph is warn­ing Con­gress of Peo­ple (COP) sup­port­ers that a vote against deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har is detri­men­tal to the par­ty. Youseph made the com­ments at the open­ing of Ram­da­har's cam­paign of­fice in Tu­na­puna on Fri­day night. "Sup­port­ing any­one oth­er than Ra­mad­har for po­lit­i­cal leader would put the soul of the par­ty at se­vere risk. Hav­ing met and in­ter­act­ed with all the se­nior mem­bers of the COP I am sat­is­fied that Ra­mad­har is the best can­di­date to as­sume lead­er­ship of the par­ty," Youseph said.

The May­or fur­ther not­ed that Ra­mad­har was in­stru­men­tal in sus­tain­ing the COP when many thought the par­ty would have dis­ap­peared af­ter be­ing de­feat­ed in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion. Al­so throw­ing his sup­port be­hind Ramd­har was MP for Bon Air West/Lopinot, Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas. Dou­glas said he was moved by Ra­mad­har's com­pas­sion and his com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing the lives of cit­i­zens. He too point­ed out that while many peo­ple speak about work­ing for the COP, it was Ra­mad­har who took the lead when he em­barked on a se­ries of ini­tia­tives to keep the par­ty alive.

Mean­while, Ra­mad­har is stand­ing firm on his stance that Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er should step aside un­til be­ing cleared from cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion. Ra­mad­har said his stance was based on the found­ing prin­ci­ples of the COP and why the par­ty was formed. Ra­mad­har main­tained that he and Warn­er still share a cor­dial re­la­tion­ship.