Rose­marie Sant

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) will not be en­ter­ing in­to any al­liance with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the No­vem­ber 28 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the COP, Dr Anirudh Ma­habir, told Guardian Me­dia that "there had been no dis­cus­sion with the UNC on any al­liance for the elec­tion and at this time we are stand­ing alone. That will con­tin­ue un­less some­thing new hap­pens to change it."

Ma­habir said the COP does not have the where­with­al to con­test all 14 cor­po­ra­tions "even though we do have a lot of sup­port across the coun­try. But we just do not have the mon­ey, and un­less we have the mon­ey, we will be un­able to gal­vanise the sup­port which we need to con­test all 14."

How­ev­er, he said, they will be con­test­ing seats in three cor­po­ra­tions–San Fer­nan­do, Siparia and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co.

Asked why those three were se­lect­ed, he said that Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co is in the con­stituen­cy of St Au­gus­tine which is rep­re­sent­ed by Prakash Ra­mad­har, the for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty.

The par­ty, he said, has a base there. In San Fer­nan­do, he said, they al­so have "good sup­port," which would al­so con­vert in­to votes.

With re­gard to the de­ci­sion to con­test the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Ma­habir said par­ty ac­tivist Cle­tus Pe­ters "has done con­sid­er­able work in La Brea and Ves­signy and we think be­cause of the work he did and par­tic­u­lar­ly with his pop­u­lar­i­ty, we will be able to un­seat the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) coun­cil­lor for the area (Brighton/Ves­signy) Ger­ald Debe­sette."

He said peo­ple who had agreed to con­test the elec­tion in the se­lect­ed ar­eas are al­ready work­ing on the ground ahead of the launch of the COP's cam­paign in a week's time.

Last week, COP founder Win­ston Dook­er­an and for­mer San Fer­nan­do West MP Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan were seen seat­ed to­geth­er at the Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas. Ma­habir said Seep­er­sad-Bachan has had no con­tact with the par­ty, but Dook­er­an "has been speak­ing with us."

Asked whether Dook­er­an had been ad­vis­ing the par­ty, he said, "He has no of­fi­cial role but as the per­son who start­ed the par­ty, as an el­der politi­cian and as a states­man we look to him for guid­ance. He came to our tenth an­niver­sary and ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the fur­ther­ance of the par­ty."

Dook­er­an him­self re­fused com­ment. He said he and Seep­er­sad-Bachan were at the Na­gar but it had noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics, "I go to func­tions," he said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan con­firmed that both she and Dook­er­an were in­vit­ed to at­tend the Na­gar and they ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion. But she de­clined fur­ther com­ment.

Asked about the re-emer­gence of Anil Roberts on the UNC po­lit­i­cal stage, Dook­er­an would sim­ply say it was "to­tal­ly out­ra­geous," but he de­clined to say more.

Roberts ap­peared on a UNC plat­form in Diego Mar­tin two Mon­days ago and while Roberts has in­di­cat­ed that he is still a mem­ber of the COP, Ma­habir told the Guardian that Roberts gave up his right to mem­ber­ship in the par­ty when he ap­peared on a UNC plat­form. He said, "He is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly no longer a COP mem­ber."

Ma­habir said he was "per­son­al­ly ap­palled" that Roberts had been al­lowed to ap­pear on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form. How­ev­er, he said he had to "ac­cept that the UNC is sep­a­rate from the COP and the leader can make any de­ci­sion she wants."

He said lead­ers have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the de­ci­sions they make can with­stand pub­lic scruti­ny. "When one is in lead­er­ship one must set an ex­am­ple for the pop­u­la­tion, so that we can lead the pop­u­la­tion to bet­ter judge­ment and be­hav­iour and we must be able to de­fend the de­ci­sions we make."

Ma­habir said Roberts had "not been ex­on­er­at­ed by the court, there is a tech­ni­cal de­fi­cien­cy in the au­dit which will be cor­rect­ed. So he should not re-emerge un­til he is to­tal­ly cleared of any wrong­do­ing."

Ra­mad­har told the Guardian that "the leader of the UNC is free to do what­ev­er she wants."

He said his fo­cus had al­ways been about restor­ing "ho­n­our, con­fi­dence, dig­ni­ty and trust to the pol­i­tics and lead­er­ship and that is what I in­tend to con­tin­ue to strive to achieve."

MSJ stands alone

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, the MSJ, will al­so be go­ing it alone for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion. Po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­dul­lah con­firmed that the par­ty will not be en­ter­ing in­to any al­liance for the con­test.

In June last year the par­ty said it was in­ter­est­ed in con­test­ing all 137 seats in the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, but Ab­dul­lah said "while it was our de­sire to do so we had to cut our cloth to suit our re­sources; hence the de­ci­sion to put can­di­dates in on­ly three cor­po­ra­tions."

The par­ty is ex­pect­ed to field 14 can­di­dates–sev­en in Ari­ma, six in Pt Fortin and one in Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co. Ab­dul­lah said they have al­ready screened four of the six like­ly can­di­dates in Pt Fortin, three of the sev­en for Ari­ma and the per­son like­ly to con­test the MSJ tick­et for the San­ta Rosa/Blan­chisseuse seat.

He said they have had four cot­tage meet­ings in Pt Fortin and two in Ari­ma and "peo­ple we are en­gag­ing with are very en­thu­si­as­tic and pos­i­tive." Ac­cord­ing to Ab­dul­lah, on the ground peo­ple who are say­ing that they "feel they do not get good rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal par­ties are look­ing to the MSJ with hope."

The par­ty will launch its cam­paign on Sun­day at a venue and time yet to be an­nounced, but Ab­dul­lah said the theme for their cam­paign is 'Send them a mes­sage.'

The par­ty's man­i­festo will be ready, he said, in the next two weeks.

ILP vy­ing for Ch­agua­nas

And the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, the ILP, will be con­test­ing all the seats in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and is still look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­test­ing the San­gre Grande, Cou­va and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

ILP spokesper­son In­dra Ma­haraj said the par­ty has com­plet­ed screen­ing for Ch­agua­nas and the can­di­dates are al­ready con­duct­ing walk­a­bouts, but, she said, "we still have to make a fi­nal de­ci­sion on the oth­er three cor­po­ra­tions Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro, San­gre Grande and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co."

She re­ferred ques­tions on any al­liance with any oth­er par­ty to po­lit­i­cal leader Rekha Ramjit.

The par­ty will hold a news con­fer­ence on Sun­day, the day be­fore nom­i­na­tion day, No­vem­ber 7, when it will an­nounce de­tails of its slo­gan and the man­i­festo.

Back­ground

The In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) was formed in April 2013 short­ly af­ter the dis­missal of Jack Warn­er from the Cab­i­net of then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The new par­ty was formed ahead of the Ju­ly 29 by-elec­tion for the Ch­agua­nas West seat which Warn­er had won on a UNC tick­et in 2010. Warn­er won the by-elec­tion with 69 per cent of the vote cast.

In Oc­to­ber 2013, Warn­er's ILP con­test­ed the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion gar­ner­ing 62,000 votes.

The main show was in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion where the UNC got three seats, the PNM three and the ILP two.

Days af­ter the elec­tion ILP-elect­ed coun­cil­lor Faaiq Mo­hammed broke par­ty ranks and vot­ed with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to elect Gopaul Bood­han as may­or of Ch­agua­nas.

In June 2010, the MSJ with­drew from the coali­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. The par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­dul­lah al­so re­signed his post as a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor.

Then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had ac­cept­ed his res­ig­na­tion, thanked him for his ser­vice, but in a part­ing shot not­ed that the de­mands he had made of gov­ern­ment were "im­pos­si­ble, un­rea­son­able and reck­less." How­ev­er, Er­rol Mcleod who came from the labour move­ment and con­test­ed the elec­tion un­der an MSJ ban­ner stayed in the gov­ern­ment.

In 2013, the MSJ con­test­ed the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion alone. The par­ty field­ed five can­di­dates but was not suc­cess­ful.

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple was one of the main coali­tion part­ners in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions but their po­lit­i­cal stocks weaned un­der Ra­mad­har and out of the six seats con­test­ed in 2015, on­ly Ra­mad­har was suc­cess­ful.