Geisha Kow­lessar

He says they call him "The Con­nec­tor" and he's guar­an­teed to be­come the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).Why?Ver­non de Li­ma said sim­ply be­cause he has time to do the peo­ple's work.His con­tenders, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Prakash Ra­mad­har, Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts and Nali­ni Di­al, do not pos­sess that ad­van­tage, de Li­ma at­test­ed.He in­sists that some­one hold­ing the po­si­tion of a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment could not per­form the job of po­lit­i­cal leader of the COP."It's one or the oth­er. Mr Dook­er­an tried to do it and that's why he had to opt out be­cause he couldn't do it and any­body who feels they could do it I'm very sor­ry for them."When we have COP meet­ings Mr Roberts and Mr Ra­mad­har miss a lot of the meet­ings, they send mes­sages to say they're very sor­ry they can't come. Is ei­ther you could do some­thing or you can't and do it prop­er­ly," de Li­ma said.

De­scrib­ing the elec­tion race as hec­tic, de Li­ma, a promi­nent at­tor­ney for the past 46 years, said at the time of this in­ter­view, that there had been no mud-sling­ing and none was ex­pect­ed.But if ac­cu­sa­tions were to be hurled against him, de Li­ma said it would be wa­ter off a duck's back."It's has been very smooth be­cause the con­test is about is­sues, it's not about per­son­al­i­ties," he said.The biggest chal­lenge fac­ing the par­ty was the elec­tion of a new leader, de Li­ma said."There is no chal­lenge big­ger than that. That's the num­ber one is­sue," he said.Since the COP's in­cep­tion, de Li­ma boast­ed, the par­ty was rapid­ly gain­ing ground.

"A lot of peo­ple have left the PNM and are join­ing the COP be­cause they would not ac­cept the UNC prin­ci­ples but would very well ac­cept the COP's prin­ci­ples which are in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and re­spectabil­i­ty," de Li­ma said.He claimed he had the sup­port of many of the COP's new­com­ers. Lament­ing that so­ci­ety had for­got­ten core val­ues, de Li­ma said T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a pe­ri­od where there was glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion."Peo­ple are ad­mir­ing peo­ple be­cause they have plen­ty mon­ey but they have no char­ac­ter," he said"That's what we want to move away from and that is what the Con­gress of the Peo­ple is hop­ing to take the peo­ple to, to move away from ador­ing and gen­u­flect­ing to peo­ple who have made mon­ey by do­ing wrong things," de Li­ma said.

Say­ing he had no prob­lem with peo­ple mak­ing mon­ey, de Li­ma said peo­ple must do so ho­n­ourably.Asked if the COP was to crum­ble would that sig­nal an end of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment?De Li­ma main­tained that the par­ty would "nev­er" fall."The COP will nev­er crum­ble be­cause it is an idea quite apart from be­ing a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the COP rep­re­sents the phi­los­o­phy of re­spectabil­i­ty that finds it­self deep-seat­ed in near­ly every fam­i­ly of T&T that is God-fear­ing," de Li­ma said.

Say­ing the par­ty's mem­ber­ship was close to 100,000, de Li­ma said when he be­comes the COP's leader he would can­vas through­out the length and breadth of T&T to en­cour­age peo­ple to join the par­ty."So that it would be­come the most pow­er­ful par­ty in the next elec­tion. As it is now part of my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­sure that the coali­tion con­tin­ues to strive and to be­come stronger, he said."But it's al­ways my in­ten­tion that the Con­gress of the Peo­ple will grow not on­ly in stature but in num­bers so that at the next elec­tion we will be big enough to be­come the ma­jor par­ty in the coali­tion.

First promis­es

Ac­cord­ing to de Li­ma, when elect­ed he would first­ly en­sure that the promis­es made dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion would be ho­n­oured."Those promis­es would be pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and deal­ing with crime and the Calder Hart is­sue," he said.He charged that the Hart is­sue was "not at all dealt with by the Gov­ern­ment" but re­mained one of the main planks up­on which the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship as­sumed of­fice.

"The pow­er of re­call, the em­ploy­ment of ref­er­en­dum be­cause there are many ques­tions which touch on the moral­i­ty of the pub­lic for in­stance the death penal­ty," de Li­ma said."My po­si­tion is that we catch peo­ple who mur­der oth­er peo­ple in cold blood or kid­nap peo­ple and send them abroad. When you catch them they should be de­stroyed but every­one may not agree so I say put it to a ref­er­en­dum and in­tro­duce the le­gal­i­sa­tion for that."Say­ing he was al­so against broth­els and abor­tion, de Li­ma said those mat­ters should al­so be "put to the peo­ple.""I would work to make sure these sorts of things are in­tro­duced, let the peo­ple have a say," he said."In some coun­tries broth­els are al­lowed, if the peo­ple de­cid­ed that well..."

Pre­pared to give­up law prac­tice

Say­ing he was pre­pared to give up his law prac­tice "al­to­geth­er," de Li­ma added, "I'm danc­ing a tight rope, I'm go­ing to start giv­ing it up."Asked how he would rate the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, de Li­ma said it was "al­right.""It could do bet­ter and I ex­pect it would do bet­ter in the years to come and par­tic­u­lar­ly this year," he said."What is right is right and what is wrong, I will say that and it is my in­ten­tion to take the bull by the horns. All I want is fair­ness and eq­ui­ty for every­one, that in­cludes PNM," de Li­ma said.Tack­ling the crime sit­u­a­tion, he said was one area that need­ed im­prove­ment."Every day crime seems to be­com­ing worse... It seems the crim­i­nals are on top of the po­lice be­cause they are not afraid to them," he said."You have to get tough with these peo­ple you have to un­der­stand it is a war. In my view I have no doubt that Gov­ern­ment has failed to clamp down on crim­i­nals, ab­solute­ly.

"One day some­body is go­ing to get se­ri­ous."Ac­cord­ing to de Li­ma, his pri­ma­ry job was to find out peo­ple's prob­lems and ren­der as­sis­tance."They call me the con­nec­tor. You come to me when you can't get through. I pick up the phone and see how I can help you," de Li­ma said.Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has al­so been known for al­le­vi­at­ing the plight of many.But de Li­ma and Warn­er must not be classed to­geth­er."I do noth­ing like what Jack does. Do not class us in the same boat at all," he quipped.