Shal­iza Has­sanali

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed is pre­pared to face what­ev­er ac­tion the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) may take against him for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's Mon­day Night Fo­rum week­ly pub­lic meet­ings.In fact, Mo­hammed, who was asked not to par­tic­i­pate in two such meet­ings by COP ex­ec­u­tives, in­tends to show his de­fi­ance against the par­ty's stance and will at­tend all up­com­ing meet­ings.

He said he is tak­ing this stand be­cause he be­lieves all mem­bers of the Part­ner­ship need to come to­geth­er to show a sense of uni­ty and strength for the Gov­ern­ment.Mem­bers were told of the par­ty's po­si­tion via let­ters.COP chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­pressed sur­prise the let­ters were leaked to the news­pa­per when con­tact­ed. Told about Mo­hammed's in­ten­tions, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said, "That is up to Mo­hammed at this time. I don't want to com­ment on that."

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the mat­ter will be dis­cussed at the par­ty's na­tion­al coun­cil meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas, to­day.How­ev­er, she said the de­ci­sion not to par­tic­i­pate in the PP meet­ings was in­di­cat­ed to the oth­er par­ties at their last meet­ing about a month ago.

"We had in­di­cat­ed that we were not ready to par­tic­i­pate un­til we have met, en­gaged the oth­er par­ties and agree to a for­mat. We will have a na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing to dis­cuss that is­sue. On­ly to say that the po­si­tion the par­ty took is one we had in­di­cat­ed be­fore, at our last chair­men's meet­ing, that we will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in any joint plat­form meet­ings un­til the par­ties meet and agree to ob­jec­tives of the meet­ings."

Once they have come to an agree­ment, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said they will take the mat­ter to the COP na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive for ap­proval. She said there was a process the or­gan­i­sa­tion must fol­low.The is­sue stems from an April 4 let­ter, which the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained, sent by act­ing COP gen­er­al sec­re­tary Clyde Weath­er­head to his COP "col­leagues," in­form­ing them that the par­ty would not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the PP's Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Barataria on April 8.

Weath­er­head al­so dis­patched a let­ter on March 23 to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gen­er­al sec­re­tary Davin­dranath Tan­coo ex­plain­ing that the par­ty's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive had tak­en the po­si­tion not to take part in a sim­i­lar meet­ing on March 25 in Cara­po, stat­ing that the ob­jec­tives and plat­form agen­da of the PP Gov­ern­ment were not im­me­di­ate­ly clear, and they were un­aware of any dis­cus­sion about hold­ing such meet­ings at the lev­el of the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers' fo­rum or the chair­men's meet­ings.

Four con­sid­ered is­sues high­light­ed by Weath­er­head were:

�2 The COP main­tains that such plat­forms of the PP should be or­gan­ised by mu­tu­al agree­ment among the mem­ber par­ties of the coali­tion. This is to en­sure prop­er or­gan­i­sa­tion of such events, in­clud­ing set­tled ob­jec­tives, well-or­gan­ised plat­form pre­sen­ta­tions and ad­e­quate op­por­tu­ni­ty for mo­bil­i­sa­tion of the au­di­ence

�2 We are un­aware of any dis­cus­sion be­tween our par­ties on the hold­ing of such a meet­ing on Mon­day at the lev­el of the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers' fo­rum or the chair­men's meet­ings

�2 Based on the in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, the ob­jec­tives and plat­form agen­da were not im­me­di­ate­ly clear

�2 Mon­day was al­so the first of three con­sec­u­tive days of the con­sul­ta­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to be con­duct­ed in To­ba­go. As a re­sult, the po­lit­i­cal leader and some na­tion­al of­fi­cers of the COP would not be avail­able for the pub­lic meet­ing

Weath­er­head ex­plained in the let­ter that the COP was aware of a pro­pos­al made at its last meet­ing of chair­men of the mem­ber par­ties, for the mount­ing of PP plat­forms in the con­text of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion cam­paign due in the com­ing weeks.

"We are aware that the pro­pos­al was to be con­veyed to the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers' fo­rum for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion and de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, it was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear to us that the pro­posed meet­ing on Mon­day night was part of that ac­tiv­i­ty, as no meet­ing of the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers has since been con­vened."

In any event, Weath­er­head said the COP was of the view that all mat­ters of lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the PP should be the sub­ject of a com­pre­hen­sive dis­cus­sion among the mem­ber par­ties, in­clud­ing seat al­lo­ca­tion, man­i­festo de­vel­op­ment, cam­paign or­gan­i­sa­tion and any oth­er rel­e­vant mat­ters.

"We an­tic­i­pate that any fu­ture pub­lic meet­ings or ac­tiv­i­ties of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship will be the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion and de­ci­sion among all the part­ner par­ties to en­sure the most suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of such im­por­tant po­lit­i­cal events," he wrote.

Mo­hammed:I am not wor­ried

Mo­hammed, who was one of two COP mem­bers who at­tend­ed the Barataria meet­ing, al­so spoke on the plat­form.His col­league Ari­ma MP and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Rodger Samuel, in­tro­duced Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the crowd.

Ad­mit­ting he spoke to COP's act­ing leader Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas about the views ex­pressed by the par­ty re­cent­ly, Mo­hammed said he un­der­stood what the par­ty was say­ing about its process and how lead­ers were sup­posed to dis­cuss and de­cide is­sues on be­half of the Part­ner­ship."And that will hap­pen in due course, I am sure," said Mo­hammed, who vowed to con­tin­ue at­tend­ing the meet­ings.

Mo­hammed un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the San Juan/Barataria con­stituen­cy for the COP in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion.He said if his pres­ence could show the Part­ner­ship was stand­ing as a unit­ed force to the pop­u­la­tion, he would have achieved some­thing.Asked if he would de­fy the par­ty's man­date, he said, "Yes, it is just a mat­ter of process on how we op­er­ate, and I un­der­stand that com­ment. That is not a prob­lem by me."

Told the mat­ter could be raised at the par­ty's next meet­ing, Mo­hammed replied, "That is okay. No prob­lem."Asked if he was pre­pared to face the con­se­quences, Mo­hammed said, "Of course."Mo­hammed said he lives in a democ­ra­cy and will con­tin­ue to fol­low the COP's poli­cies, vi­sion and prin­ci­ples.

Samuel wantsis­sues re­solved

Samuel ad­mit­ted that a copy of the let­ters were e-mailed to him af­ter Mon­day's meet­ing. He al­so con­firmed he spoke to Dou­glas on the phone."Pri­mar­i­ly, we dis­cussed the same thing in the let­ters."Samuel said he did not at­tend the par­ty's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive be­cause his moth­er had died."So I was not privy to what was dis­cussed."

Asked if he would be par­tic­i­pate in fu­ture meet­ings, Samuel said he hoped when the next meet­ing ar­rives, the is­sues would have been worked out."You can be dif­fer­ent with­out be­ing in­dif­fer­ent. I don't want to be in­dif­fer­ent or dis­agree­able. I don't make things a big is­sue."Asked if he felt COP mem­bers should at­tend the meet­ings, Samuel said "as long as the meet­ing is de­signed for the pur­pose of the Part­ner­ship, it is not an is­sue, you know. If it is a Part­ner­ship meet­ing, then I don't have a prob­lem with it."

Samuel be­lieves the mat­ter can be worked out with com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion."I think we are sup­posed to be a team."Asked if the COP was mak­ing a moun­tain out of a mole­hill, Samuel said every in­di­vid­ual views things dif­fer­ent­ly.Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Weath­er­head con­firmed that Dou­glas had spo­ken to both men. How­ev­er, he re­fused to say what had been dis­cussed.

"That is in­ter­nal par­ty busi­ness."Dou­glas said the COP had asked that the Part­ner­ship have a dis­cus­sion on how they pro­ceed in a mean­ing­ful way to­geth­er.