Gail Alexan­der

New chair­man of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan says she will not take any uni­lat­er­al ac­tion to move the par­ty in­to the di­rec­tion of the Op­po­si­tion PNM if ten­sions arise in the Peo­ples' Part­ner­ship. She best­ed for­mer COP chair­man Joseph Toney for the post in last week­end's COP in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan spoke yes­ter­day pri­or to her first meet­ing with the new COP ex­ec­u­tive. She al­so met with for­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and can­di­dates who had con­test­ed COP's in­ter­nal elec­tions to be­gin mov­ing the par­ty for­ward . The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, which left the PP in May, has been sup­port­ing the PNM in is­sues con­cern­ing the PP Gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing the COP cam­paign Toney was asked if he would take the COP to­wards the PNM if the COP moved away from the PP. Toney had said he would not.

Yes­ter­day, when asked whether she would steer the COP to the PNM if coali­tion ten­sions arose, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said:

"That is not an is­sue for me to un­der­take at all. Any such move would have to be a par­ty de­ci­sion, de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances. That is not a de­ci­sion I would take as chair­man but I don't even see that in the near fu­ture at all.

"I don't see any as­so­ci­a­tion with the PNM but as I said that de­ci­sion can't be tak­en by me or the leader or COP ex­ec­u­tive. "On­ly the mem­ber­ship can de­cide things like that. So I would not make any uni­lat­er­al move to­wards the PNM as our con­sti­tu­tion does not al­low of­fi­cers to de­cide on such is­sues. On­ly COP's na­tion­al coun­cil or as­sem­bly can de­cide those things."

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she had con­grat­u­lat­ed PNM Sen­ate leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les for win­ning the post of PNM?la­dy vice chair­man at last Sun­day's PNM?con­ven­tion. She added: "I see the fact of women now emerg­ing in the pol­i­tics as a good sign. One of the prob­lems we had be­fore was that women were scep­ti­cal to get in­volved due the type of pol­i­tics be­ing prac­tised - char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion and the like - but now I hope to see more join­ing the po­lit­i­cal land­scape."

She hoped to be­gin any nec­es­sary "heal­ing process" in the COP from yes­ter­day's first ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, adding:

"I had said dur­ing the cam­paign a new ex­ec­u­tive would deal with is­sues raised by can­di­dates and we will try to do so."

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she had, for ex­am­ple, in­vit­ed can­di­date Satu Ram­cha­ran to meet yes­ter­day af­ter her al­le­ga­tions of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties by some can­di­dates in the cam­paign. She said she al­so was work­ing on "bring­ing home" 'COP­ers' who had "parked up", in­clud­ing Ver­non de Li­ma, Wendy Lee Yuen and oth­ers.

She said she al­so spoke to for­mer deputy leader Robert May­ers last week on re­turn­ing to the par­ty. PP of­fi­cials said af­ter COP's elec­tions and with a new ex­ec­u­tive in place, a meet­ing of the chair­men of all coali­tion mem­bers would be held to­day. This would set the stage for a lat­er meet­ing of all coali­tion lead­ers, it was stat­ed.