Nadaleen Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar feels op­ti­mistic about to­day's meet­ing of the lead­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. She was speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the launch of the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum 2012. The launch was held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, St Ann's.

"I am very up­beat and hope we can sort things out be­tween us, the var­i­ous lead­ers, as we meet to­mor­row." To­mor­row's meet­ing would be the third. One of the is­sues which dom­i­nat­ed the meet­ings was the call by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) to re­move San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray.

This mat­ter first sur­faced af­ter Coudray de­fect­ed from the COP to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress dur­ing that par­ty's March 24 in­ter­nal elec­tion. Asked how she felt about not be­ing giv­en an ul­ti­ma­tum by the COP, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "You will have to ask them that. I don't know, when we get in there to­mor­row, we will see what will hap­pen. I am op­ti­mistic that things would work out."

Asked by re­porters if one of the lead­ers of the Part­ner­ship should change al­le­giances what would be done, she said: "We would have fur­ther dis­cus­sions on the mat­ter. There is strong com­mit­ment on the part of all the lead­ers based on the meet­ings we had pre­vi­ous­ly, very strong com­mit­ment for them to make things work be­cause we do be­lieve we have some­thing to of­fer."