Geisha Kow­lessar

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan yes­ter­day knocked Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts for re­fus­ing to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to the par­ty on a video which al­leged­ly shows a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter en­gag­ing in ques­tion­able be­hav­iour.She made the com­ment mo­ments af­ter Roberts left a meet­ing called to ad­dress the video, which shows a man rolling a cig­a­rette made of a sub­stance re­sem­bling mar­i­jua­na in the com­pa­ny of two women in a ho­tel room.The video, which was post­ed on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia sites, has gone vi­ral. Roberts has nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied he is the per­son in the video but there have been re­peat­ed calls for him to be fired.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that Roberts re­fused to co-op­er­ate with ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, adding the mat­ter need­ed to be im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed.She said: "I am dis­ap­point­ed we were not able to get fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the mat­ter be­cause I am sure Mr Roberts recog­nis­es that he is a mem­ber of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple.He was elect­ed on a COP tick­et and he owes a du­ty to the par­ty for us to en­sure that this mat­ter is ful­ly clar­i­fied... you have a du­ty and an oblig­a­tion to this par­ty."When the peo­ple elect­ed you on that tick­et there were cer­tain ex­pec­ta­tions and we must ful­fil these ex­pec­ta­tions... maybe the re­ports are in­ac­cu­rate, maybe not in a fair way to him (Roberts) but I think at the end of the day, as pub­lic fig­ures we have to be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able and we have an oblig­a­tion to put these mat­ters to rest. This is go­ing on too long in the pub­lic do­main," Seep­er­sad-Bachan added.

She made the com­ments while field­ing ques­tions from the me­dia at the COP's Flag­ship House at Broome Street, Wood­brook.The COP ex­ec­u­tive had re­ceived a copy of the video for view­ing but Roberts had asked that he be with them for that process and the meet­ing was called for that pur­pose and for him to an­swer ques­tions on the is­sue but Seep­er­sad-Bachan said very lit­tle was achieved yes­ter­day."It was a meet­ing where we want­ed cer­tain clar­i­fi­ca­tions. A let­ter was sent to Mr Roberts last Thurs­day and a copy of this so-called video was re­quest­ed. We did have a copy of it. We did not show it," she said."We sought to get clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Mr Roberts but he in­di­cat­ed to us that he is not will­ing to com­ment. So we re­al­ly did not get any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion." She said, how­ev­er, that Roberts in­sist­ed dur­ing the meet­ing he had nev­er used il­le­gal drugs nor been in­volved in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

Mem­bers who met with Roberts al­so in­clud­ed the par­ty's deputy leader Dr Anirudh Ma­habir and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Clyde Weath­er­head. The meet­ing last­ed for some ten to 15 min­utes. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said Roberts was adamant the mat­ter was now in his at­tor­ney's hands and there­fore it was not per­mis­si­ble to com­ment on it. She added: "We want­ed to bring this mat­ter to an ear­ly de­ter­mi­na­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly we were un­able to achieve that."Might I say I am not very sat­is­fied with that po­si­tion ei­ther but we are warned that the mat­ter is in the hands of his at­tor­neys and we can­not com­ment on it."As it is now, not many of us are very hap­py with this sit­u­a­tion and I know there are many, many mem­bers of our po­lit­i­cal par­ty who are not very hap­py with this sit­u­a­tion. "Our mem­bers have been call­ing on us to deal with this mat­ter and we have been try­ing to deal with it in the best way that we can as a par­ty."

She said the meet­ing was al­so in­tend­ed to de­ter­mine a way for­ward. On the next step, she said a meet­ing would be called as soon as pos­si­ble with the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive and the mat­ter has to be prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed be­fore any mea­sures could be im­ple­ment­ed.

Roberts: I'm still a COP mem­ber

The meet­ing be­gan around 2 pm and Roberts emerged some 20 min­utes lat­er. He tried to avoid mem­bers of the me­dia by hus­tling to get in­to a black, heav­i­ly-tint­ed SUV.He then ad­vised me­dia to "drink wa­ter in this hot sun."Asked for his com­ment on what tran­spired, Roberts said: "Com­ments about what? A meet­ing with my par­ty to de­ter­mine the way for­ward to the elec­tion 2015 to en­sure that Kei­th Row­ley nev­er be­comes prime min­is­ter." Asked whether he still re­mained a COP mem­ber Roberts said: "Of course."

PM re­mains mum

At a mass po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at Mid Cen­tre, Ch­agua­nas, last Sat­ur­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said she would on­ly make a de­ci­sion on Roberts's po­lit­i­cal fu­ture with the par­ty af­ter care­ful­ly ex­am­in­ing the ex­ist­ing ev­i­dence. She said then: "A de­ci­sion must be made in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. I will make it with­out fear and with­out favour."But even as I am look­ing at this, I find it very, very strange, they say pass­ing strange, that this was a video over a year-and-a-half ago. The PNM was say­ing that they had this video and they talk­ing about it a year-and-a-half ago."