Clevon Raphael

Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Prakash Ra­mad­har is stick­ing to his po­si­tion that Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er should step aside un­til his trou­bles with FI­FA are brought to an end..a view op­posed to that of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. A suc­cess­ful at­tor­ney who left a lu­cra­tive pri­vate prac­tice to en­ter na­tion­al pol­i­tics, Ra­mad­har an­gri­ly re­acts to a sug­ges­tion by the Chair­man of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Franklin Khan, that the PNM should con­sid­er aban­don­ing its win alone or lose alone pol­i­cy and be­come part of a coali­tion group to get back in­to po­lit­i­cal of­fice.

Q: Mr Min­is­ter, you have had some time to re­con­sid­er your stand, are you still of the view that Mr Warn­er should step aside un­til this bac­cha­nal with FI­FA is over?

A: (At his South Quay, Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs head of­fice Thurs­day morn­ing) My and the par­ty's state­ment has noth­ing to do with per­son­al­i­ties; it has to do with a very ba­sic prin­ci­ple that when a sub­stan­tial al­le­ga­tion is be­ing made it is in­cum­bent up­on the of­fice hold­er to step down un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed.

Con­sid­er­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter's po­si­tion is di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to yours...? It is not di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed at all; one is le­gal­is­tic and the oth­er is po­lit­i­cal. Your stance is ex­act­ly that of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple Na­tion­al Move­ment, and doesn't this give the per­cep­tion of some kind of link with the PNM? We have a right to make a state­ment on prin­ci­ple and may be there will be more when Mr Warn­er re­turns. We re­spect the de­ci­sion made by the Prime Min­is­ter, be­cause at the end of the day she has a du­ty to per­form.

Mr Ra­mad­har, doesn't this al­so give the im­pres­sion that there is no co­he­sion of views em­a­nat­ing from the Cab­i­net, some­thing the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion was ac­cused of by its de­trac­tors dur­ing its just com­plet­ed first year in of­fice? Let's make a fun­da­men­tal dis­tinc­tion, Clevon, be­tween a de­ci­sion of Cab­i­net and an out of Cab­i­net de­ci­sion. When we sit in Cab­i­net we are all bound by its col­lec­tive de­ci­sion, right? The new pol­i­tics of the coali­tion is some­thing we are all learn­ing from as we pro­ceed.

Mr Min­is­ter, those who share your view seek to make a sim­i­lar kind of con­nec­tion with the Mary King mat­ter. Are you so in­clined? (Clasp­ing his hands while lean­ing back on his swiv­el chair) The prin­ci­ple is the same, the is­sues may be dif­fer­ent.

Mr Ra­mad­har, giv­en our cul­ture don't you re­al­ly be­lieve that if he should ac­cept your ad­vice it would be an ad­mis­sion of guilt on Mr Warn­er's part? (An in­cred­u­lous stare) Just the op­po­site ac­tu­al­ly. There is no ad­mis­sion of guilt for a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­duct­ed and if I were in his shoes I would have stepped aside for my own per­son­al ben­e­fit. Oh re­al­ly? Yes, be­cause I can on­ly imag­ine the kind of at­tacks that would come on a dai­ly ba­sis by the en­e­mies of the Part­ner­ship, es­pe­cial­ly the moral­ly starved PNM, to try and bring us down.

Mr Min­is­ter, aren't we run­ning the risk of hav­ing no one in the Cab­i­net if each time an al­le­ga­tion is made against that mem­ber he steps down, un­til the charge/s is/are in­ves­ti­gat­ed? That is why I premise it on the ba­sis that it is not to take place on just about any al­le­ga­tion. It may end up be­ing a wild al­le­ga­tion in this Warn­er is­sue be­cause we do know that it was po­lit­i­cal games­man­ship at the high­est lev­el and with all re­spect, Mr Blat­ter out­ma­noeu­vred Mr Warn­er in this one be­cause the elec­tion went ahead un­op­posed..So we un­der­stand all of these things.

What about the ar­gu­ment that you are giv­ing am­mu­ni­tion to the PNM to con­tin­ue its at­tack on the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion and on Mr Warn­er? (A se­ri­ous coun­te­nance while lean­ing for­ward) The hypocrisy of the PNM that they now abide by this new-quote and un­quote-prin­ci­ple. (Get­ting emo­tion­al) I don't want to go through the en­tire trau­ma this na­tion has had to en­dure over the years un­der the sev­er­al cor­rupt PNM regimes. Let's look now at the in­ter­nal elec­tion of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple in which you are run­ning for the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader.

How vi­tal is this ex­er­cise to the pol­i­tics of Trinidad and To­ba­go? It's im­por­tant be­cause the Con­gress of the Peo­ple is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant com­po­nent of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. The COP needs the Part­ner­ship as well as the Part­ner­ship needs the COP. My mis­sion is to en­sure that the COP con­tin­ues the work to ful­fil the hopes and as­pi­ra­tions of not on­ly its sup­port­ers, but the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty by ex­ten­sion. To be a stronger par­ty in its own right.

If you were to be asked why should mem­bers vote for you in­stead of your ri­vals? Well, I have worked with this par­ty since 2007 to en­sure not just its sur­vival but its growth and its strength. Are you aware of moves, sub­tle as they may be, to sub­sume the COP in­to the UNC? (Ad­just­ing his wrist­watch) You hear those state­ments all the time but I want to as­sure you that all who may be­lieve that, that is not go­ing to hap­pen be­cause the im­por­tance of coali­tion pol­i­tics is about checks and bal­ances on each oth­er.

Mr Dook­er­an is be­ing asked to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion not to de­fend his post, are you in sup­port of this re­quest? We are very proud of Mr Dook­er­an and we shall build up­on his work but this is a par­ty of the fu­ture and we need a con­tin­ued vi­sion along the lines that Mr Dook­er­an has start­ed. But with a new en­er­gy, a new thrust. We have been crit­i­cised for not be­ing ag­gres­sive enough but we can have ag­gres­sion that is re­spect­ful and re­spectable in achiev­ing what we want for the par­ty. I in­tend to bring that to the lead­er­ship of this par­ty.

You will know Mr Dook­er­an bet­ter than most of us out­side the par­ty. Is he hurt­ing at this time in the con­text of him be­ing ac­cused of be­ing too soft, etc? Any­one would be hurt when they are not un­der­stood. The pu­ri­ty of one's ac­tion is what you judge and when time has passed and we re­flect we will re­alise what a spe­cial per­son he has been. He is not one to shout and scream in the face of ad­ver­si­ty. He is com­plete­ly mis­un­der­stood be­cause of the old cul­ture of pol­i­tics that be­lieve it should be of en­ter­tain­ment val­ue rather than gov­er­nance val­ue.

Mr Ra­mad­har, were you at any time dur­ing the last year wor­ried that be­cause of the nu­mer­ous mis­steps of the PP Gov­ern­ment that the coali­tion would not sur­vive at least its first year? (Eyes wide open) Not at all. Long be­fore the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship came in­to be­ing the COP put tremen­dous time in bring­ing to­geth­er the var­i­ous in­ter­est groups so that we un­der­stood the need to bring the coun­try to­geth­er on an is­sue-based lev­el and to work­er to­geth­er to win an elec­tion, which we did.

So I nev­er had a doubt that it would suc­ceed and it must suc­ceed be­cause our very po­lit­i­cal sur­vival and the fu­ture of this coun­try de­pends on the suc­cess of the com­po­nent par­ties and the Part­ner­ship it­self. It is very in­struc­tive to hear that be­cause re­cent­ly a very pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zen told me that the PP must suc­ceed be­cause if it fails TT would be thrown back 50 years to the days of "n....." and "c......"! pol­i­tics?

(A grave ex­pres­sion) Oh God, we can­not af­ford that!

For the first time the di­vides of the past are be­ing re­moved. Peo­ple are tru­ly start­ing to feel one na­tion, one peo­ple. The coun­try is far too small to be di­vid­ed along any lines par­tic­u­lar­ly on race. Fi­nal­ly Mr Ra­mad­har, what's your take on the re­cent­ly stat­ed po­si­tion of the chair­man of the PNM Mr Franklin Khan that his par­ty should look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing part of a coali­tion as the PNM would find it dif­fi­cult to win an elec­tion on its own?

(A very an­gry tone) Let me dis­agree with him 100 per cent. I don't know what their views have been or what they are now. Their 20/20 vi­sion is what has this coun­try in this great jeop­ardy...at the edge of a precipice. If we had con­tin­ued along that path we would have been a com­plete­ly failed state at this point it in time. I don't want to even imag­ine the ter­ror and trau­ma we would have been suf­fer­ing now. Oh my gosh, are you re­al­ly that ve­he­ment­ly against Mr Khan's sug­ges­tion?

We wel­come all on board but don't tell me about PNM, now. You don't rein­vent your­self now when you had every op­por­tu­ni­ty when you were warned you were de­stroy­ing this na­tion and they did noth­ing to stop it. You are wel­come to be part of sav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go but in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.