Gail Alexan­der

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple po­lit­i­cal par­ty is yet to ap­proach for­mer leader Win­ston Dook­er­an on its in­cli­na­tion to sup­port his nom­i­na­tion for the pres­i­den­cy of T&T, says PRO Ken­ny Jagdeosingh. A new pres­i­dent will be elect­ed on Feb­ru­ary 15 by the elec­toral col­lege com­pris­ing MPs and sen­a­tors in the Par­lia­ment. In­cum­bent George Maxwell Richards' term ends next month.

The COP said re­cent­ly it want­ed Dook­er­an for pres­i­dent. Ef­forts to con­tact the Min­is­ter of For­eign af­fairs proved fu­tile yes­ter­day as his sec­re­tary said he was at­tend­ing a meet­ing in Guyana. Jagdeosingh said as far as he was aware, the COP has not yet dis­cussed its pref­er­ence for Dook­er­an af­ter the idea was raised at its coun­cil meet­ing last week.

He said he didn't see why Dook­er­an wouldn't ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tion or not be tempt­ed to ac­cept nom­i­na­tion as he had made a lot of sac­ri­fices for T&T. Jagdeosingh said Dook­er­an might be the on­ly per­son who might be ac­cept­ed across the board by all T&T. He said whether Dook­er­an would be the pre­ferred can­di­date of the Gov­ern­ment would be an­oth­er is­sue.

Jagdeosingh said the COP's po­lit­i­cal leader would be the ob­vi­ous choice to speak with Dook­er­an on the is­sue. COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har didn't an­swer calls. PP House leader Roodal Mooni­lal did not an­swer calls to as­cer­tain if the Gov­ern­ment would con­sid­er COP's nom­i­na­tion.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed said the Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er it once a nom­i­na­tion is made in the ap­pro­pri­ate way. He said a fi­nal de­ci­sion will be made on the Gov­ern­ment's choice just be­fore the Feb­ru­ary 5 nom­i­na­tion day for sub­mis­sion of can­di­dates.