Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The on­go­ing con­flict sur­round­ing San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray's de­ci­sion to switch po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance is do­ing the po­lit­i­cal par­ty more harm than good. And, ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany the about turn by for­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) po­lit­i­cal leader Win­ston Dook­er­an can be seen as a means to try and quell the dis­cord with­in the par­ty.

He ex­plained that while Dook­er­an opt­ed to "stay out" of the mat­ter he has re­alised the lev­el of dis­en­chant­ment among the mem­ber­ship. "What is hap­pen­ing is that there is a lead­er­ship vac­u­um at the mo­ment with­in the COP. The for­mer leader who was the founder of the par­ty be­lieves he may be able to quell and in­flu­ence what is tak­ing place giv­en that he was one of the sig­na­to­ries of the Fyz­abad Ac­cord.

"He is giv­ing a phys­i­cal pres­ence on the ground and us­ing what­ev­er in­flu­ence he has to try and bring some sta­bil­i­ty to what is tak­ing place. The for­mer leader feels he can speak on some of the per­son­al agree­ments and arrange­ments that were ar­rived at in the ac­cord," Ghany said.

Point­ing out that the move by sev­er­al COP mem­bers to voice their views on the is­sue was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to score po­lit­i­cal points, Ghany said mem­bers may very well need to re­con­sid­er their op­tions. "Some of the coali­tion mem­bers are seek­ing to score po­lit­i­cal points by dis­cussing the mat­ters in the pub­lic do­main in­stead of dis­cussing it be­hind closed doors."

"The con­tin­ued move to ven­ti­late in­ter­nal mat­ters in the pub­lic do­main is a re­flec­tion to gain ad­di­tion­al ne­go­ti­at­ing strength. What is sup­posed to be an in­ter­nal par­ty mat­ter is be­ing dis­cussed in the pub­lic do­main by mem­bers of the COP. Clear­ly they are lob­by­ing for sup­port.

"If they were at­tempt­ing to re­solve the mat­ter then go­ing be­hind closed doors would have been the way to go to re­solve the is­sue," Ghany said. Say­ing that the is­sue was far from be­ing re­solved Ghany re­it­er­at­ed that the COP leader made a mis­take by ven­ti­lat­ing his dis­ap­proval pub­licly.