Richard Lord

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har claimed yes­ter­day Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar "forced" it to abort its cam­paign to re­move San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray. The Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter said: "We nev­er ac­cept­ed the re­ten­tion of Mar­lene Coudray as may­or. "It was at the in­sis­tence of the Prime Min­is­ter that Mar­lene Coudray will not re­sign that we re­alised the may­or is­sue was lost to the COP. It was nev­er set­tled." Ra­mad­har, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said it was on the ba­sis of that po­si­tion that the is­sue of al­ter­na­tive op­tions was raised. He said the COP nev­er agreed to the re­ten­tion of Coudray but in the con­text of the Prime Min­is­ter's in­sis­tence, "we said we would take the is­sue of the op­tions to our mem­ber­ship," adding the par­ty then re­ject­ed those op­tions. Ra­mad­har said the COP was "leav­ing the Mar­lene Coudray mat­ter open. We are leav­ing it as it is. It is closed to us as there is noth­ing else we can do. "It is now up to those in au­thor­i­ty to ad­dress the mat­ter," he added. He in­sist­ed he was not in breach of an agree­ment by par­ty lead­ers, as claimed by Sport Min­is­ter and COP mem­ber, Anil Roberts. Ra­mad­har said he nev­er signed the joint state­ment is­sued af­ter the April 12 meet­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. Ear­li­er, Roberts said Ra­mad­har was in breach of the agree­ment.He said Ra­mad­har was one of the five lead­ers who signed the agree­ment which said the de­mand for Coudray's re­moval as may­or of San Fer­nan­do was no longer an is­sue.

The T&T Guardian se­cured a copy of the two-page joint agree­ment, which stat­ed:

• There was an agree­ment on the shar­ing of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties aris­ing out of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions of 2010 and the COP would have the may­oral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion;

• giv­en Coudray's change in par­ty al­le­giance, the COP no longer has that po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty;

• the most ap­pro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion of the COP's loss of the po­si­tion would be the al­lo­ca­tion of an­oth­er and to this end the lead­ers con­sid­ered a num­ber of op­tions; and

• ow­ing to lack of time, a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion could not be made that day.

He said Ra­mad­har, by sign­ing that agree­ment, agreed "that may­or Coudray was not an op­tion, was off the ta­ble. He ac­cept­ed with the oth­er lead­ers and the Prime Min­is­ter that Coudray's (re­moval) was not an op­tion."

Roberts said all that was to be agreed on was an al­ter­na­tive po­si­tion for the COP. "My leader now comes and breach­es the trust of this signed arrange­ment and he is talk­ing about breach of trust of the UNC," Roberts said in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. "He should check him­self be­fore he wrecks him­self," Roberts added. He said Ra­mad­har should rep­re­sent T&T in the up­com­ing Olympics "be­cause the speed with which he is flip-flop­ping, he would bring back gold." Roberts al­so com­ment­ed on Ra­mad­har's plan for COP mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate to ei­ther vote against or ab­stain when re­quired to vote on cer­tain Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing a bill to abol­ish the Privy Coun­cil as the high­est court of ap­peal and re­place it with the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice. He said: "Not even my fa­ther can tell me how to vote on any is­sue. So I would love to see Prakash Ra­mad­har, Joseph Toney (COP chair­man) and who­ev­er else tell me, as an elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, how I must vote or not vote. That and God face I would love to see. That isn't hap­pen­ing."

He said Ra­mad­har was "a stranger to the truth." Com­ment­ing on Ra­mad­har's call for the move by Gov­ern­ment to ac­cept the CCJ as the fi­nal court of ap­peal for mur­der ap­peals, Roberts said there were no pro­vi­sions in the Con­sti­tu­tion for it. He said while the part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment re­mained "good," he was con­cerned about the fu­ture of the COP. He added: "What I am wor­ried about is the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. My par­ty seems to be try­ing to run it­self out of le­git­i­ma­cy by mis­step, by flip-flop and by mis­trust." He said the breach of trust had noth­ing to do with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress but with Coudray. Roberts said he hoped Ra­mad­har would not "flip-flop" when he sought to dis­ci­pline him for his state­ments on the is­sue. Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple Ash­worth Jack said: "No one was forced to ac­cept any­thing dur­ing the (lead­er­ship) meet­ing. We sat and reached con­sen­sus on the mat­ter." Jack said no one was forced in the de­lib­er­a­tions. He in­sist­ed the joint state­ment "was agreed to by all the lead­ers."

PP lead­ers

Fol­low­ing is the joint state­ment by the lead­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship made on April 12, 2012

The lead­ers of the par­ties of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship at its meet­ing to­day agreed that:

1. There was an agree­ment with re­spect to the shar­ing of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties aris­ing out of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions of 2010 and that in this re­gard, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple would have the may­oral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion

2. Giv­en the cir­cum­stances of the change in par­ty al­le­giance by Ms Mar­lene Coudray, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple no longer has that po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

3. The most ap­pro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's loss of a po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty would be the al­lo­ca­tion of an­oth­er po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and to this end the lead­ers con­sid­ered a num­ber of op­tions.

4. Due to the con­sid­er­a­tion of time, a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­pro­pri­ate op­tion could not be made to­day.

The lead­ers, in our sev­er­al meet­ings, have al­so dis­cussed a num­ber of oth­er cru­cial is­sues re­lat­ing to the func­tion­ing of the part­ner­ship and the Gov­ern­ment, and have agreed that ac­tions are to be tak­en on the fol­low­ing mat­ters:

1. Rules of en­gage­ment of the par­ties with­in the Part­ner­ship;

2. fair share of re­sources to com­mu­ni­ties;

3. re­solv­ing of the con­cerns of im­por­tant sec­tors of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty; and

4. im­prov­ing the gov­er­nance of the coun­try by im­ple­ment­ing our man­i­festo com­mit­ments with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to our state­ments that:

• "The econ­o­my will con­tin­ue to be trans­formed through a po­lit­i­cal sys­tem that will be more re­spon­sive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry.

• "We will have clean, re­spon­si­ble and re­spon­sive gov­ern­ment with leg­isla­tive changes and con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments to curb ex­cess­es and abuse of pow­er. We reaf­firm our em­pha­sis on trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

•"There will be a greater em­pha­sis on col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach­es to fa­cil­i­tate con­sul­ta­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion, in­volve­ment and con­sen­sus-build­ing. This will help us to achieve uni­ty of pur­pose in our ef­forts and part­ner­ship and trust in the so­ci­ety."

To this end, the par­ty chair­men have been man­dat­ed to meet ur­gent­ly and rec­om­mend ac­tion on these mat­ters for the con­sid­er­a­tion and ap­proval by the lead­ers.

The par­ty chairs are to meet be­fore the end of April and at least month­ly there­after. The po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are al­so to meet at least on a month­ly ba­sis.

We re­it­er­ate our ear­li­er state­ment that: "The lead­ers recog­nise the im­por­tance of this fo­rum for the dis­cus­sion and res­o­lu­tion of na­tion­al pol­i­cy is­sues.