Re­tired Staff Sergeant Ru­fus Fos­ter has thrown his hat in­to the ring for the lead­er­ship post of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Fos­ter, 56, said he made the de­ci­sion based on what he de­scribed as the "very poor and weak lead­er­ship" of cur­rent par­ty leader Prakash Ra­mad­har.Af­ter spend­ing 27 years in the De­fence Force, he said, he joined the par­ty in 2006.

He is the fa­ther of three daugh­ters and lives in Mal­oney. He said he is flu­ent in Span­ish and is the vice-pres­i­dent of the Pan Amer­i­can Draughts and Check­ers Fed­er­a­tion.

He added: "My in­ten­tion is to se­ri­ous­ly con­test the lead­er­ship be­cause over the years par­ty mem­ber­ship has been dwin­dling, so much so that even at a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing we have prob­lems get­ting a quo­rum, which is about 25 peo­ple."And peo­ple have been ask­ing whether the COP is rel­e­vant or not, giv­en the very weak lead­er­ship by Ra­mad­har."Peo­ple are say­ing if Mr Ra­mad­har wins again they are go­ing to leave the par­ty and this will on­ly make it weak­er. Any oth­er per­son be­sides Ra­mad­har is a good choice."On what new he would bring to the par­ty, Fos­ter said it had to be­gin with cer­tain struc­tures, es­pe­cial­ly ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of the poor man.

He added: "We have to re­mem­ber why we got in­to of­fice in the first place and we must nev­er for­get the small man, the foot sol­diers who helped build the COP."My pol­i­cy is to keep in touch with the small man and to of­fer hope to the hope­less be­cause if you don't keep in touch with peo­ple you are go­ing to lose them."He al­so said a re­ju­ve­na­tion of the par­ty and a dy­nam­ic leader at the helm, who could chart the way, were need­ed."I want those who are be­wil­dered and dis­ap­point­ed to know there is hope. If I can get those peo­ple to come out to vote, I have a good chance of be­ing the po­lit­i­cal leader of the COP," Fos­ter said.On Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan's de­ci­sion to run for lead­er­ship, Fos­ter said she seemed to be lack­ing that qual­i­ty."There is not much dif­fer­ence be­tween her and Mr Ra­mad­har," he said.He said he would be fil­ing his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers to­day at the COP's Char­lieville Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre.