Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) will meet on Sat­ur­day to of­fi­cial­ly ap­prove Prakash Ra­mad­har as the par­ty’s new po­lit­i­cal leader.

COP chair­man Lons­dale Williams said the move was ap­proved by the par­ty’s Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive last week Fri­day.

Mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil were giv­en a sev­en-day no­tice for the meet­ing. COP’s con­sti­tu­tion states that a deputy leader can be ap­point­ed po­lit­i­cal leader un­til an in­ter­nal elec­tion, which is due af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Williams said at the meet­ing on Sat­ur­day, a mo­tion will have to be moved and vot­ed up­on.

The COP’s Na­tion­al Coun­cil com­pris­es mem­bers from the 41 con­stituen­cies. Williams couldn’t say how many would at­tend. The quo­rum for the meet­ing is 27.

If the mo­tion isn’t ap­proved, the chair­man will re­main the most se­nior of­fi­cial in the par­ty un­til a leader is in place.

“But it’s ex­pect­ed Mr Ra­mad­har will be made leader,” Williams said.

Ra­mad­har suc­ceed­ed COP’s first po­lit­i­cal leader, Win­ston Dook­er­an, in 2011 and ob­tained a sec­ond term in 2014, af­ter a bat­tle with his for­mer chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who was sup­port­ed by Dook­er­an. Ra­mad­har re­signed as leader in 2016 amid con­tin­u­ing crit­i­cism that dogged his tenure with the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

He resur­faced sev­er­al weeks ago, when, af­ter a meet­ing with the UNC to ex­plore an al­liance, then-COP in­ter­im leader Kirt Sin­nette an­nounced that he had served his time as leader and had ap­proached Ra­mad­har to re­turn as leader.

On De­cem­ber 17, Sin­nette ap­point­ed Ra­mad­har deputy leader and then re­signed. Sin­nette said COP’s Na­tion­al Coun­cil would have to ap­prove Ra­mad­har’s ap­point­ment as leader but those arrange­ments were no longer in his hands.

There has been a heat­ed dis­pute among COP of­fi­cials over how the mat­ter was han­dled. Al­though Ra­mad­har lat­er ad­mit­ted that the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion was not done ac­cord­ing to the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion, he said he “took con­trol” of the COP to “en­sure its sur­vival.”

COP sources said on De­cem­ber 29, a phone dis­cus­sion took place be­tween Ra­mad­har and some COP ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, where he faced “hard ques­tions on his plans.” It was lat­er agreed that the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive would meet and plan the par­ty’s way for­ward.

Par­ty sources said that on­ly af­ter a leader is ap­point­ed will they get the in­for­ma­tion on COP’s in­ter­nal af­fairs, mem­ber­ship strengths and oth­er de­tails, which Ra­mad­har had re­cent­ly asked for.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had spo­ken to Ra­mad­har be­fore and af­ter he be­came COP in­ter­im leader. She al­so said that small­er par­ties wish­ing to form a coali­tion with the UNC must pub­licly pro­vide de­tails of their strengths be­fore they can be con­sid­ered.