Nali­ni Di­al, head of the group call­ing them­selves loy­al­ists of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), is claim­ing that de­ci­sions and state­ments are be­ing made by the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive with­out in­volve­ment from ground-lev­el sup­port­ers. Di­al al­so called on the ex­ec­u­tive to en­gage in soul-search­ing and de­ci­pher where it stood with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

She was speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence held yes­ter­day at the Val­park Chi­nese Restau­rant in Val­sayn. "I think the ex­ec­u­tive should se­ri­ous­ly look at where we stand in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship," she said. "There have been too many is­sues of mis­trust, dis­re­spect and even with the fi­as­co with Sec­tion 34 we heard our leader say­ing that the is­sue didn't even come be­fore him as chair­man of the LRC (Leg­isla­tive Re­view Com­mit­tee)..I mean if you are in a part­ner­ship, you are sup­posed to know what is go­ing on."

De­scrib­ing the COP as par­ty that "al­lows for democ­ra­cy," Di­al said, "We must al­so do things in a fair and trans­par­ent man­ner. "We have a sys­tem of del­e­gate vot­ing where­by these del­e­gates are asked by a show of hands whether they dis­agree or agree with a mo­tion," she said. "This is not sup­posed to be their own per­son­al opin­ion, but must re­flect the view of their con­stituents, gar­nered af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with their re­spec­tive mem­bers."

Claim­ing that this does not oc­cur, Di­al said in the in­stances that it does, it was with­out "sin­cer­i­ty and vigour." She said the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tions are due on Oc­to­ber 28 and called on mem­bers to come out and vote with more in­ter­est. She said the par­ty had set high stan­dards for it­self and it was dif­fi­cult to main­tain in "this type of po­lit­i­cal cul­ture that ex­ists in our coun­try."

"At the same time we must not com­pro­mise our be­liefs and stan­dards when fac­ing these chal­lenges," she said. Asked if she would be con­test­ing any posts in the in­ter­nal elec­tion, Di­al said she was not in­ter­est­ed in any. She said she had spo­ken to ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers on the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with mem­bers, but was not sure if they were ac­tu­al­ly lis­ten­ing to her calls.