Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Who will lead? As the race for lead­er­ship of Con­gress of The Peo­ple (COP) heats up to­day, with some 38,000 mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to come out to vote for a new po­lit­i­cal leader in the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tion. The four-way race is be­tween can­di­dates-Prakash Ra­mad­har, Anil Roberts, Ver­non De Li­ma and Nali­ni Di­al. Polls and sur­veys have all placed Ra­mad­har in a favourable po­si­tion to be­come the new leader of the par­ty. Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have al­so giv­en him the nod as the most suit­ed can­di­date to lead the par­ty fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion by for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Win­ston Dook­er­an to throw in the tow­el.

Fol­low­ing close­ly is Roberts, who is known for his vo­cif­er­ous stance on pub­lic is­sues.

The oth­er con­tender, De­Li­ma has vowed to com­mit his time to tak­ing the par­ty for­ward, while an­i­mal ac­tivist Di­al has al­so promised to make a pos­i­tive change if elect­ed. Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts how­ev­er, are warn­ing that the race is not over un­til the 'fat la­dy sings'. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the in­ter­nal elec­tion has re­vi­talised the COP, which has been un­able to stand on its own since its for­ma­tion in 2007. Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists not­ed that the par­ty is be­gin­ning to make its mark.. Ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists, the out­come of the elec­tion would de­ter­mine what di­rec­tion the COP takes. Com­mend­ing the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process tak­en by the COP, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist/an­a­lysts In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li said the po­si­tion should be adopt­ed by all po­lit­i­cal par­ties al­low­ing the elec­torate an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­cide.

Reaf­fir­ma­tion or dis­in­te­gra­tion?

How­ev­er, Sage­wan-Al­li said while the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process rep­re­sents "new pol­i­tics", the scathing at­tacks on par­ty mem­bers does not auger well for the move. "We have seen too many seep­age's of "gut­ter" pol­i­tics in­fil­trat­ing the process where some can­di­dates have found it nec­es­sary to at­tack oth­ers, in some in­stances on a per­son­al lev­el thus stray­ing from the is­sues at hand. This has left a dis­taste­ful taste in peo­ple's mouth. The view at this time is the out­come of this elec­tion can re­sult in the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the par­ty. This some­thing that should con­cern its mem­ber­ship and those of­fer­ing them­selves would be less than ho­n­ourable even dis­hon­est if af­ter com­mit­ting to de­vel­op­ing the par­ty they turn around and fa­cil­i­tate its ab­sorp­tion in­to the stronger coali­tion part­ner. "I am of the strong view that there is no room in the na­tion­al gov­er­nance for in­di­vid­u­als who come with any­thing less than clean hands."

On the is­sue of whether the COP still stands by the found­ing prin­ci­ples of the par­ty, Sage­wan-Al­li said the choice for leader will de­ter­mine the way for­ward for the par­ty. "The out­come of the elec­tions can see ei­ther the reaf­fir­ma­tion of the par­ty's prin­ci­ples or dis­in­te­gra­tion of same. It will be for the vot­ing mem­ber­ship to care­ful­ly weigh the of­fer­ings of all four can­di­dates to de­ter­mine what is best suit­ed for its par­ty. On this cam­paign we have seen can­di­dates in an at­tempt to win favour not on­ly ag­gres­sive­ly seek to di­min­ish op­po­nents but al­so oth­er se­nior par­ty mem­bers and in­deed gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials," Sage­wan-Al­li said.

Win­ner to de­ter­mine PP's re­la­tion­ship

Ex­press­ing a sim­i­lar view, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said the per­son to be elect­ed the new leader will de­ter­mine what di­rec­tion the par­ty takes. Ram­per­sad not­ed that the in­ter­nal elec­tion had prompt­ed the mem­ber­ship to take a keen­er in­ter­est in gov­er­nance. "The de­bates con­duct­ed by the COP are his­toric. What is in­ter­est­ing is to see how the win­ner en­gages the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) be­cause the re­la­tion­ship is go­ing to be dif­fer­ent with who­ev­er wins. From what we are hear­ing, if De­Li­ma wins a more hard­line ap­proach is ex­pect­ed to­wards the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. The can­di­dates are all en­gag­ing the PP dif­fer­ent­ly so there­fore the out­come of the elec­tions and the win­ner will de­ter­mine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the COP and the PP."Fur­ther not­ing that sev­er­al COP mem­bers re­mained dis­grun­tled over the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, Ram­per­sad said many ques­tions re­mained unan­swered. "This thing about fair­ness in a coali­tion gov­ern­ment is not re­al­is­tic. In re­al­i­ty, eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion can­not be ex­pect­ed; that ex­ist on­ly in the­o­ry it does not hap­pen in prac­tice. The out­come of the COP elec­tions is go­ing to be very in­ter­est­ing," Ram­per­sad stat­ed.