Renu­ka Singh

Chair­man of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, has re­signed from the par­ty. She said the COP is be­ing side­lined by the main part­ner in the coali­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)."Yes I have re­signed as chair­man and as a mem­ber of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple," Dy­er-Grif­fith told re­porters as she and a group of peo­ple walked out of the par­ty's Na­tion­al Cooun­cil meet­ing in Char­lieville yes­ter­day morn­ing.

She said fol­low­ing her res­ig­na­tion, at least 40 to 50 oth­er COP mem­bers "al­so left the room, some of them re­sign­ing im­me­di­ate­ly and I am not sure what would have tran­spired af­ter­wards."In her let­ter of res­ig­na­tion, Dy­er-Grif­fith con­demned COP po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har for not stand­ing up against the coali­tion part­ners in sup­port of the mi­nor­i­ty par­ty.

She said chief among her rea­sons for quit­ting was the treat­ment met­ed out to par­ty mem­bers, in­clud­ing for­mer Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith who was re­moved with­out no­tice dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary 4 Cab­i­net reshuf­fle that saw for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, as well as her hus­band, for­mer Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, re­moved from of­fice. She claimed Ra­mad­har, de­spite be­ing Hamel-Smith's po­lit­i­cal leader, was left out of dis­cus­sions about his re­moval.

"I take um­brage for the per­ceived lack of dis­cus­sion with you as the po­lit­i­cal leader of a par­ty re­sid­ing in the Part­ner­ship by the lead­ers of the Part­ner­ship, be­fore ma­jor de­ci­sions are tak­en. Such was the case with the most re­cent re­moval of Mr. Hamel Smith. This is not the first in­stance of this non dis­cus­sion.Dy­er-Grif­fith said over the years, the COP and its ac­tivists have felt "some­what mar­gin­al­ized" by the UNC.

"We have en­dured the hue and cry over the years, with many of us grow­ing weary of the con­stant strug­gle to em­pow­er mem­bers, sup­port­ers, ac­tivists and mem­bers of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion on mat­ters of eq­ui­ty.""One part­ner re­mained more equal than the oth­ers," she said.

When Dy­er-Grif­fith's hus­band was re­moved from Cab­i­net ear­li­er this month, Ra­mad­har de­scribed her re­ac­tion as "emo­tion­al". In her res­ig­na­tion let­ter, Dy­er-Grif­fith said: "The mat­ters re­lat­ing to the re­cent is­sue of the re­moval of Mr. Gary Grif­fith has raised the ire of many. I thread care­ful­ly, as I would not wish to be la­belled as emo­tion­al once again.

"How­ev­er, for the po­lit­i­cal leader to have agreed whole­heart­ed­ly, via both his pro­nounce­ment and via a me­dia state­ment by the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive in sup­port of his state­ment, begs the ques­tion of the ra­tio­nale, not on­ly for sup­port­ing same, but al­so the ra­tio­nale for re­fus­ing to make a sim­i­lar call for the step­ping aside of any oth­er min­is­ters cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed in the said mat­ter," she said.

Af­ter send­ing in her res­ig­na­tion to Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day, Dy­er-Grif­fith post­ed one word on her Face­book page: "Ex­hale."

Hamel-Smith out of COP pol­i­tics

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Hamel-Smith said he had not been in­volved in COP po­lit­i­cal busi­ness for the past five years and did not see him­self re-en­ter­ing that fold."I know noth­ing of her res­ig­na­tion oth­er than what I have read in the news­pa­pers," he said.He said while he has seen Dy­er-Grif­fith "on oc­ca­sion", they have not had dis­cus­sions about her fu­ture with the COP.

When asked whether he was sur­prised by her move, Hamel-Smith said: "I saw it as like­ly."He said he did not have a grasp of the par­ty and as such could not de­tail the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of her res­ig­na­tion on the fu­ture of the COP.For the time be­ing, he said, he re­mained a non-re­signed mem­ber of the par­ty but not an ac­tive one.ILP leader Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day laud­ed both Grif­fiths for their strong stance in the po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and de­scribed Dy­er-Grif­fith's move as "un­prece­dent­ed".

"The coun­try is for­tu­nate to have peo­ple like the Grif­fiths to look up to," he said.Warn­er called on right think­ing peo­ple to sup­port Dy­er-Grif­fith and leave the COP."Leave Ra­mad­har stand­ing alone and let the coun­try see his true clothes," he said.

Bharath: Com­mitt­ment to PP mat­ters

Re­act­ing to the res­ig­na­tion of Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) chair­man Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the com­mit­ment of the par­ty to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) is what mat­ters.Bharath said he has not been for­mal­ly in­formed of Dy­er-Grif­fith's de­par­ture from the par­ty, not­ing it was an in­ter­nal mat­ter for the COP."It will, I pre­sume, be­come a na­tion­al is­sue at some point in time. As I said, I have not had the full de­tails of it to be in a po­si­tion to ad­e­quate­ly com­ment."

Asked whether he thought the res­ig­na­tion would af­fect the par­ty, Bharath said: "I don't know at this point in time, my guess is that it won't. I don't know the ex­tent or how many peo­ple would have walked out with Mrs Dy­er-Grif­fith and the in­flu­ence they may have held with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

|The leader of the COP is on record as stat­ing that the COP re­mains firm­ly with­in the part­ner­ship and in sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment, and I think that is what is im­por­tant at this point in time."

For­mer chair­man weighs op­tions

Say­ing it's time to change the game, for­mer COP chair­man Nicole Dy­er Grif­fith yes­ter­day hint­ed that she'll be speak­ing to like-mind­ed in­de­pen­dent peo­ple who aren't in­ter­est­ed in cer­tain op­tions on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape.She's did not say whether this ex­cludes the ILP or PNM.Af­ter she and oth­ers left the par­ty's Na­tion­al Coun­cil yes­ter­day morn­ing, some mem­bers hint­ed that they might be link­ing with Jack Warn­er's ILP or oth­ers op­posed to the PP.

Dy­er Grif­fith said she would take a break and ex­am­ine her next step since her op­tions are open.She said there was a wide pool of in­de­pen­dent peo­ple who were not one thing or the next and she was cer­tain some of them would be in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tions. She said there would be in­de­pen­dent peo­ple not in­ter­est­ed in A or B.Dy­er-Grif­fith would not say whether that ex­clud­ed the ILP or PNM, but said: "For too long there hasn't been in­clu­sion, it's time to change the game."

COP Diego Mar­tin cen­tral field of­fi­cer John Rig­naud, who al­so re­signed yes­ter­day said he would wait on Dy­er-Grif­fith to dis­cuss what they in­tend­ed to do but if they were go­ing to ILP, he had to think about that.Rig­naud said link­ing with ILP is "far from my thoughts." (Gail Alexan­der)