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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Dookeran weighs calls to fight Prakash

...An­a­lyst: Nei­ther fit to lead COP

by

20140601

With the in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) due next month, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James be­lieves nei­ther Prakash Ra­mad­har nor Win­ston Dook­er­an is fit to lead.James added that the par­ty was al­so po­lit­i­cal­ly dead.Ra­mad­har, the MP for St Au­gus­tine and the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, an­nounced his in­ten­tion to con­test lead­er­ship for a sec­ond term. Dook­er­an mean­while has been asked by some COP ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers to con­sid­er con­test­ing the elec­tion, sched­uled for June 29.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Dook­er­an said he was in Lon­don and was aware of the is­sue, but said he had not made up his mind about con­test­ing the post he walked away from a cou­ple years ago."I am aware of the sit­u­a­tion... that peo­ple have been call­ing for me to take back lead­er­ship of the par­ty, but it is some­thing I need to think about," Dook­er­an said.

James, who de­scribed the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter as a "tepid leader," not­ed that he vol­un­tar­i­ly gave up the lead­er­ship po­si­tion, paving the way for Ra­mad­har to take over. But he point­ed out that both men were fac­ing the same is­sues as leader."Both Dook­er­an and Ra­mad­har are un­fit for the po­si­tion of leader. When Dook­er­an gave up the lead­er­ship po­si­tion, one got the im­pres­sion at the time that he him­self felt he was in­com­pe­tent giv­en all the noise which was tak­ing plac­ing in the par­ty," James said.

Ra­mad­har, James said, of­ten showed he was en­dors­ing is­sues oc­cur­ring in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment ei­ther by re­main­ing silent or by us­ing care­ful­ly se­lect­ed words."It seems Ra­mad­har is more of a UNC than a COP and this was even ex­pressed from with­in the COP," he said."The is­sue with Anil Roberts has been a slap in the face for the COP, be­cause up to now they have not been able to have a re­al con­ver­sa­tion with Roberts about the al­le­ga­tions."

Ac­cu­sa­tions have been hurled at Roberts af­ter a video sur­faced fea­tur­ing a man re­sem­bling a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter rolling a mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rette in a ho­tel room with two women.

Lit­tle to show

On whether the COP could be re­vived, es­pe­cial­ly with the gen­er­al elec­tion around the cor­ner, James said the pub­lic has heard lit­tle or noth­ing about the par­ty's plans."How do you go about do­ing that? I have heard noth­ing about mat­ters of re­vival. They are hold­ing on to the idea of moral­i­ty in pub­lic of­fice and hon­esty and so on, but what has the COP done that we could re­mem­ber?"They have not shown their in­de­pen­dence as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty," James added.

On what was the al­ter­na­tive, he said this was dif­fi­cult, as it was not known who were the oth­er con­tenders want­i­ng to throw their hats in­to the ring.An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Mukesh Bas­deo, said it was a "wait and see game" as to whether Dook­er­an would con­test the post.But he warned that if Dook­er­an were to re­turn it would cre­ate a sce­nario with­in the par­ty.

"Mem­bers have lost con­fi­dence in Mr Ra­mad­har, but if Mr Dook­er­an de­cides to come back it would mean he would be chal­leng­ing Mr Ra­mad­har, who he iden­ti­fied as leader in the first place," Bas­deo added.


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