Resh­ma Ra­goonath

New­ly-elect­ed Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har has re-af­firmed the par­ty's com­mit­ment to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, vow­ing that the COP will do noth­ing to "desta­bilise" the Gov­ern­ment. Ra­mad­har made the state­ment yes­ter­day as he ad­dressed a me­dia con­fer­ence at COP Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, Sa­van­nah Road, Ch­agua­nas, fol­low­ing the par­ty's Na­tion­al Coun­cil meet­ing, his first as po­lit­i­cal leader. The act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter said the COP re­mained a na­tion­al par­ty com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the suc­cess of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

"In the con­text of the part­ner­ship, rest as­sured we will do noth­ing to desta­bilise the part­ner­ship. We were in­her­ent­ly im­por­tant in the cre­ation of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. We are com­plete­ly in­vest­ed in its suc­cess and the suc­cess of the COP is the suc­cess of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship; and the suc­cess of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is the suc­cess of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go," Ra­mad­har said. Two Sun­days ago Ra­mad­har won the COP in­ter­nal elec­tions by a land­slide, beat­ing Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts, at­tor­ney Ver­non de Li­ma and ac­tivist Nali­ni Di­al to the lead­er­ship post. Yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed his deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, Dr Anirudh Ma­habir, Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas and Ann Maria Mo­ra to the Na­tion­al Coun­cil where their ap­point­ments were ap­proved. Ma­habir, he said, had been cho­sen to deal with par­ty de­vel­op­ment is­sues.

Mo­ra would han­dle the par­ty's so­cial out­reach pro­grammes with the as­sis­tance of Dr Omar Ali and Dou­glas would be the li­ai­son be­tween the par­ty, its mem­ber­ship and Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Ra­mad­har said for­mer elec­tions ri­val Anil Roberts and Nali­ni Di­al, have been ap­point­ed to the par­ty's strat­e­gy team and the Green Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee, re­spec­tive­ly. "We have em­braced all. The par­ty now moves for­ward. The elec­tion was a very suc­cess­ful one. There were no losers. The on­ly losers in any­thing are the ones who can­not ac­cept change and im­prove­ment. If you want to be a win­ner ac­cept change and im­prove­ment and work to­geth­er," he said. Ra­mad­har, ap­peared be­fore the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for the first time as the COP po­lit­i­cal leader, said he was "deeply hum­bled to know the bur­den that we car­ry is a sa­cred one, hav­ing re­gard to the vi­sion of this par­ty and the work that has al­ready gone."

For­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an at­tend­ed the meet­ing. Ra­mad­har said Dook­er­an, be­ing the par­ty's found­ing fa­ther, "con­tin­ues to be ac­ces­si­ble to us, for ad­vice and for ideas. That is a re­source that we are very grate­ful to have open to us." (RR)