DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Ten­sions are es­ca­lat­ing with­in the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), with in­ter­im chair­man Lons­dale Williams again rais­ing con­cerns about ac­tions he be­lieves may have vi­o­lat­ed the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion.

In a let­ter to in­ter­im leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 10 and copied to the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive and na­tion­al coun­cil, Williams ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the le­git­i­ma­cy of some in­di­vid­u­als with­in the par­ty’s high­est bod­ies.

“Al­though I have not yet seen of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence or meet­ing min­utes re­gard­ing cer­tain ap­point­ments, dis­cus­sions with­in the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive and na­tion­al coun­cil (What­sApp Cha­t­rooms) have raised se­ri­ous con­cerns. It ap­pears that sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als list­ed as mem­bers of these bod­ies may not, in fact, be le­git­i­mate par­ty mem­bers or have ques­tion­able char­ac­ter traits that may not align with what we hope to achieve as true pa­tri­ots,” Williams wrote.

Williams al­leged he made three un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to meet with Ra­mad­har to ad­dress these press­ing is­sues.

While not op­posed to form­ing a coali­tion, Williams al­so urged cau­tion about re­unit­ing with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), which had formed the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment with the COP, To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), and Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) in 2010.

“To be clear, I am not op­posed to strate­gic al­liances aimed at re­mov­ing an in­ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, we must learn from past mis­takes and cor­rect the mis­steps made in the ear­ly days of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship,” he said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Williams re­it­er­at­ed a re­quest made to Ra­mad­har dur­ing a statu­to­ry meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 3, urg­ing him to en­sure that all par­ty mem­bers are fa­mil­iar with the COP’s con­sti­tu­tion.

“I al­so sug­gest­ed that, giv­en your es­teemed le­gal ex­per­tise, you guide us through the prop­er process­es for con­duct­ing par­ty busi­ness. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this has not yet been done,” he said.

“The way we gov­ern our par­ty now will in­evitably re­flect how we gov­ern the coun­try should we be en­trust­ed with that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. There­fore, we must act with trans­paren­cy, due process, and re­spect for the rule of law.”

Williams con­clud­ed the let­ter by re­quest­ing a meet­ing with Ra­mad­har as soon as pos­si­ble to ad­dress the is­sues.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, Ra­mad­har seemed sur­prised that the in­ter­nal is­sues had been pub­li­cised.

“I will let the par­ty deal with that,” he said, adding, “So, he put that in­to the pub­lic do­main, did he? All right!”

Ra­mad­har then said he had not read the let­ter. Asked if he would com­ment af­ter re­view­ing it, he said, “I will not be com­ment­ing on Mr Williams’ fail­ures over the while and what­ev­er let­ter he has sent, I’m sure it’s not help­ful to the par­ty.”

Con­tact­ed there­after for a re­sponse to Ra­mad­har, Williams said, “Mr Ra­mad­har is free to talk about fail­ings, and he should al­so look at his fail­ings.”

He al­so said he was pre­pared for any con­se­quences his let­ter might bring.

“Wher­ev­er the chips may fall, whether it be that they try to ex­pel me, re­move me, what­ev­er that case might be, I will stand on the con­sti­tu­tion and noth­ing more. This is not about favouritism, this is not about per­son­al­i­ty, this is about en­sur­ing that we do things right.”

Found­ing mem­bers

sup­port chair

One of the COP’s found­ing mem­bers, Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, who has served as sec­re­tary for field op­er­a­tions since 2006, yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia he and Williams were re­moved from the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive What­sApp groups for rais­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the par­ty.

De­spite this, Ever­s­ley ex­pressed sur­prise at the con­tents of the let­ter, re­call­ing that at their last meet­ing, Williams had re­quest­ed a one-on-one meet­ing with Ra­mad­har which went ig­nored.

“I stand with the con­tents of the chair­man’s let­ter and I am sup­port­ing the chair­man 100 per cent, al­though the chair­man and I do not speak. And I in­tend to take fur­ther ac­tion where this is con­cerned so that the pop­u­la­tion must not be fooled. In 1990, there was a coup where over 20-some­thing peo­ple were mur­dered. I was a hostage. And I am ask­ing the ques­tion to­day—are we see­ing a coup in the COP present­ly? We talked about vot­er padding, the par­ty talked about gen­er­al elec­tions, who vot­er padding. Are we see­ing now vot­er padding in the Con­gress of the Peo­ple?”

An­oth­er found­ing mem­ber, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who was al­so a for­mer par­ty leader, agreed with Williams’ con­cerns. She said as chair­man, Williams had a du­ty to en­sure the par­ty fol­lowed its con­sti­tu­tion.

“What are you say­ing to the coun­try if this is how you want to op­er­ate? How are you go­ing to op­er­ate in gov­ern­ment? I am of the firm con­vic­tion that many of the is­sues that are in the pub­lic do­main right now are be­cause of mis­steps in gov­er­nance and those mis­steps in gov­er­nance are be­cause they fail to fol­low due process,” she said.

“Po­lit­i­cal par­ties have a du­ty to en­sure that all those who hold high of­fice in the po­lit­i­cal par­ty ad­here to due process be­cause the be­hav­iours that you ex­hib­it here are what you are go­ing to ex­hib­it in gov­ern­ment.”

Though Seep­er­sad-Bachan ac­knowl­edged the COP’s strug­gles, she said she would not re­turn to na­tion­al pol­i­tics or re­join the COP in its cur­rent form.

She al­so cau­tioned Ra­mad­har to be mind­ful that he could lose the sup­port of gen­er­al COP sup­port­ers by fol­low­ing old pat­terns.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, COP founder Win­ston Dook­er­an de­clined to com­ment on the is­sues oc­cur­ring in the par­ty.