For­mer TOP chair­man Li­onel Cok­er, now with the ILP, has dis­tanced him­self from an al­leged plot against To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Del­mon Bak­er.Cok­er said he had no knowl­edge of that when asked yes­ter­day about claims by Bak­er's ad­vis­er, Stan­ley Beard, that an ILP ra­dio pro­gramme had made pub­lic mis­chief with al­le­ga­tions about Bak­er and sev­er­al for­mer TOP ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers were all part of a plot to tar­nish Bak­er.Bak­er re­mained in­com­mu­ni­ca­do yes­ter­day af­ter he went to see the Prime Min­is­ter on Wednes­day about what has been deemed "nasty ru­mours."

ILP's Jack Warn­er and deputy Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit did not an­swer calls yes­ter­day Cok­er said he did not know what Beard was talk­ing about. He said half of TOP's ex­ec­u­tive had re­signed and two–the for­mer elec­tions of­fi­cer and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary–had joined ILP as he had. "So I don't know what he's (Beard) talk­ing about. So many peo­ple left TOP, you don't know who is who," Cok­er added.He said TOP had about 3,000 mem­bers on its books and 500 fi­nan­cial mem­bers but since ILP be­gan re­cruit­ing in To­ba­go, he said, it had ob­tained about 3,000 mem­bers, some from TOP, some from PNM and oth­ers who have nev­er been in­volved in pol­i­tics.