Richard Lord

Chair­man of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Joseph Toney says the par­ty's found­ing leader, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, is "a most re­spect­ed leader of T&T" and was free to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to dis­cuss any mat­ter if he so choos­es. Toney said so in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Dook­er­an said he had re­quest­ed the meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Dook­er­an said he was do­ing "more than look­ing on" at de­vel­op­ments with­in the COP. Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the COP, Prakash Ra­mad­har, had is­sued a call for San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray to re­sign af­ter she was elect­ed as one of the deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on March 24.

The COP and the UNC are mem­ber units of the five-par­ty coali­tion. Ra­mad­har in­sist­ed that un­der the Fyz­abad De­c­la­ra­tion, which es­tab­lished the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, the May­or of San Fer­nan­do must be a COP mem­ber. When Coudray was ap­point­ed may­or she was a mem­ber of the COP. But af­ter four lead­er­ship meet­ings it was agreed that Coudray re­main as may­or, while al­ter­na­tive po­si­tions be of­fered to the COP. Ra­mad­har said the mat­ter would be dis­cussed at a meet­ing of the COP next week Sat­ur­day.

On Wednes­day, Dook­er­an said he "has some con­cern about what is hap­pen­ing and I men­tioned to the Prime Min­is­ter that dur­ing the course of this week I will like to have a pri­vate dis­cus­sion with her on these mat­ters." Toney said yes­ter­day such a move on the part of Dook­er­an was "most wel­comed." Toney said de­spite the dif­fer­ent views be­ing ex­pressed by COP mem­bers on the Mar­lene Coudray mat­ter, the par­ty was not di­vid­ed. He said there would al­ways be dif­fer­ent views on the is­sue but the par­ty would de­ter­mine the way for­ward at the up­com­ing meet­ing. He said the mat­ter was gen­er­at­ing so much at­ten­tion with­in the COP that a larg­er venue was be­ing sought for the meet­ing, which is sched­uled to take place at the par­ty's Ch­agua­nas of­fice. "We in­tend to lis­ten to what our mem­bers says and de­cid­ed on the way for­ward," Toney said.