Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, has put him­self in jeop­ardy by his re­cent state­ments. In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Ra­goonath said Ra­mad­har's move to have the COP MPs and sen­a­tors ei­ther vote against or ab­stain from vot­ing on Gov­ern­ment bills in Par­lia­ment would force Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to act. Ra­mad­har said the Prime Min­is­ter "wIll not sit idly by and al­low her leg­is­la­tion to be de­feat­ed in Par­lia­ment. She would have to act one way or the oth­er." Ra­goonath said Ra­mad­har was "par­tial­ly forced" to make the com­ments by the oth­er mem­bers of the COP na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive. He said de­spite the dif­fer­ences with­in the PP Gov­ern­ment, the 23-month-old Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion would not col­lapse.

He said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had the sup­port of its 21 MPs and the two To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple MPs. He said he was not sure Ra­mad­har had the sup­port of the six COP MPs. Yes­ter­day one COP mem­ber, Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts, said Ra­mad­har could not tell him how to vote in Par­lia­ment. Ra­goonath said the Gov­ern­ment was cer­tain to con­tin­ue in of­fice even if some of the COP mem­bers aligned them­selves with the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's na­tion­al Move­ment. He said the COP must be care­ful of any such move as it would lose sup­port. He said many peo­ple would not ac­cept the no­tion that the COP would leave the part­ner­ship and work with the PNM. Ra­goonath said when one was deal­ing with the is­sue of col­lec­tive Cab­i­net re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Per­sad-Bisses­sar would have to en­sure that was main­tained in the in­ter­est of her Gov­ern­ment. Ra­mad­har said the COP had no in­ten­tions of leav­ing the part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.