Richard?Lord

Giv­ing him­self a per­for­mance rat­ing of sev­en out of ten, Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har says he will take to his grave the pub­lic per­cep­tions that un­der his lead­er­ship the par­ty lost its iden­ti­ty and con­fi­dence.

Ra­mad­har said this while ex­plain­ing his de­ci­sion to re­sign as COP leader on April 24.

He spoke to re­porters in the lob­by of the Par­lia­ment, Tow­er D, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

"So I take it (blame), I will car­ry it to my grave," he stressed, adding that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) gov­ern­ment brought many ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of T&T.

Ra­mad­har made it clear that he was not re­sign­ing as a mem­ber of the par­ty and that he will con­tin­ue to serve his St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy.

"So the is­sue of whether I should demit as MP for St Au­gus­tine, the con­stituents will de­ter­mine that," he said.

Asked whom would he take di­rec­tions from on vot­ing in Par­lia­ment, Ra­mad­har said while an MP takes di­rec­tions from his par­ty, the COP al­ways al­lowed MPs to "act with what you con­sid­er best, tak­ing the views of your par­ty, but you must ex­er­cise your per­son­al dis­cre­tion and con­science on mat­ters. So I re­main open."

He said he re­ject­ed calls for his res­ig­na­tion af­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment was de­feat­ed in gen­er­al elec­tions on Sep­tem­ber 7 be­cause he did not want it to ap­pear that he was be­ing chased out of of­fice.

"That must nev­er hap­pen," adding that his de­ci­sion to give up the lead­er­ship now was "a de­lib­er­ate and vol­un­tary ex­er­cise in my dis­cre­tion as po­lit­i­cal leader to call ear­ly elec­tions."

Ra­mad­har was elect­ed in 2015 and his term was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due to ex­pire in 2017. His an­nounce­ment to re­sign on Wednes­day came a year ahead of the elec­tions.

COP sources said Ra­mad­har had be­come dis­en­chant­ed with the con­tin­u­ing crit­i­cism and "bad­ger­ing" that dogged his tenure with the PP gov­ern­ment and af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion. Ra­mad­har had been the COP's sec­ond leader since suc­ceed­ing for­mer COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an in 2011 and gained a sec­ond term in 2014 in a bat­tle with his for­mer chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad, who had been sup­port­ed by Dook­er­an.

Ra­mad­har said he was seek­ing to have not on­ly elec­tions for a new po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty on April 24 but al­so na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. He said he de­cid­ed to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion now be­cause there was need for the par­ty to sta­bilise it­self af­ter the elec­tion de­feat, with him be­ing the on­ly COP mem­ber who was re-elect­ed on Sep­tem­ber 7.

He said de­spite crit­i­cisms by some while he was in the PP gov­ern­ment, he re­mained to en­sure the then gov­ern­ment re­mained in­tact.

Ra­mad­har said he was "not ab­di­cat­ing my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to my par­ty or the coun­try and there­fore the COP will have a voice in the Par­lia­ment."

He al­so said the COP "need­ed some lev­el of change."

Re­spond­ing to claims from many that he was re­spon­si­ble for the par­ty's de­feat at the polls, Ra­mad­har said, "If that is so I will take that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

He said, how­ev­er, the last gov­ern­ment did "tremen­dous good" dur­ing its term de­spite claims of cor­rup­tion. He said there has been no ev­i­dence to sup­port those claims.

Ra­mad­har said he did not have the full sup­port of many of the COP mem­ber­ship. "It was a huge dis­ap­point­ment for me to see my par­ty and mem­bers be­fore the (Sept 7) elec­tions cam­paign­ing for and with the PNM and cel­e­brat­ing on elec­tion night at Bal­isi­er House and call­ing them­selves COP."

He said he was not pre­pared to en­dorse any can­di­date for the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader.