Prakash Ra­mad­har will not step down as leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), and the COP won't leave the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion ei­ther.

Ra­mad­har con­firmed his com­mit­ment to his par­ty and the par­ty's com­mit­ment to the coali­tion ear­li­er this af­ter­noon, two days af­ter COP suf­fered de­feat in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Two hours ear­li­er, six mem­bers of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) yes­ter­day called for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tions of the par­ty's leader Prakash Ra­mad­har and oth­er mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive.

The COP which con­trolled the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion and the Diego Mar­tin Re­giob­nal Cor­po­ra­tion af­ter the 2010 elec­tion failed to win any cor­po­ra­tion af­ter Mon­day's elec­tion.

The six COP mem­bers who con­vened a news con­fer­ence at the par­ty's Port-of-Spain of­fice to call for Prakash Ra­mad­har to quit were: Kishore Ra­mad­har, sec­re­tary for ed­u­ca­tion and re­search; Rudolph Hanamji, chair­man of COP's Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy; Ru­fus Fos­ter, chair­man of the Arou­ca/Mal­oney con­stituen­cy; Kirt Sin­nette, field sec­re­tary field op­er­a­tions; and Satu Ram­cha­ran.

Kishore Ra­mad­har is the broth­er of the COP leader, Prakash Ra­mad­har.

The group of six told re­porters the lead­er­ship of the par­ty must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the fail­ure of the COP to win any of the 14 mu­nic­i­pal and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Ram­cha­ran said the elec­tion de­feat was "the last straw" as the ex­ec­u­tive "failed to pre­pare the par­ty for the elec­tion," and un­less the lead­er­ship can pro­vide a prop­er ac­count for the par­ty's fail­ure, it must re­sign.

Hanamji said a ref­er­en­dum should be held to de­ter­mine if the COP should leave the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

Sin­nette said if Prakash Ra­mad­har and the oth­er mem­bers of the lead­er­ship did not re­sign he would leave the par­ty.

Fos­ter said if Prakash Ra­mad­har were true to the ideals of the par­ty he would re­sign.

Kishore Ra­mad­har said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship "has been detri­men­tal to the COP." He said it ap­peared that the de­ci­sion to re­main in the part­ner­ship was in­tend­ed to ben­e­fit the COP min­is­ters per­son­al­ly and not the par­ty mem­ber­ship. "By stay­ing in the part­ner­ship we have aban­doned our prin­ci­ples," he added.

And Ram­cha­ran said since for­mer San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray re­signed from the COP and joined the UNC, Prakash Ra­mad­har should have led the par­ty out of the part­ner­ship. She said the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 and $6.8 mil­lion firetruck mat­ters were oth­er rea­sons for the COP to with­draw.

She said an ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sion for the COP min­is­ters to leave the PP Gov­ern­ment over the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter was sub­se­quent­ly over­turned uni­lat­er­al­ly.

Ram­cha­ran said there was a ca­bal in the COP and that Ra­mad­har con­trolled af­fairs in the par­ty in a very "heavy-hand­ed way."

Fos­ter said he was ques­tion­ing whether Ra­mad­har "is tru­ly a COP mem­ber or an agent of the UNC." He said while the par­ty was built by the par­ty's first leader, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, the present leader was "de­stroy­ing the par­ty."

Fos­ter said if Ra­mad­har failed to step down as leader, "It would con­vince me that he is an agent of the UNC

Ed­i­tor's note: This is a de­vel­op­ing sto­ry.