Geisha Kow­lessar

On Sun­day, mem­bers of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) will elect a new po­lit­i­cal leader.The in­cum­bent, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, has an­nounced he would not be seek­ing re-elec­tion, so a new leader will take the helm of the par­ty which is part of the rul­ing coali­tion.Start­ing to­day, we pro­file the can­di­dates who are seek­ing to re­place Dook­er­an as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the COP.He's vo­cal, vo­cif­er­ous and con­fi­dent about be­ing elect­ed the next leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Anil Roberts boasts that "be­ing in pol­i­tics since ten" gives him the ad­van­tage of beat­ing out his oth­er com­peti­tors.Al­so vy­ing for lead­er­ship of the par­ty are Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Prakash Ra­mad­har, at­tor­ney Ver­non de Li­ma and an­i­mal rights ac­tivist Nali­ni Di­al.De­scrib­ing the elec­tion race as fan­tas­tic, Roberts said he had been in the race for "quite a while."

"For 11 weeks I was rac­ing my­self be­cause no­body want­ed to get in or out of the race, so I was the on­ly one," he said."When asked by the mem­bers of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple from all across Trinidad and To­ba­go, I said if we are dis­grun­tled and we are not im­ple­ment­ing and not stick­ing to our found­ing prin­ci­ples then4 I will make my­self avail­able if you want me to go."Main­tain­ing that the COP was not dead, Roberts as­sured that the mem­ber­ship was "in fact en­er­gised."

"Who­ev­er wins, one thing it has shown was that the COP is not dead...Our mem­ber­ship is en­er­gised and that's what it is about," he said."Win­ston Dook­er­an cre­at­ed a ve­hi­cle where we could all feel com­fort­able de­spite race, class, re­li­gion or so­cial stra­ta."Asked if there was any in­fight­ing as the elec­tion race in­ten­si­fied, he main­tained there was none on his part."I have been in the elec­tion race longer than any­body and I con­tin­ue to be very pos­i­tive, but peo­ple take pot-shots at me but that's all right," he said. "My back is broad from both ways from my East In­di­an moth­er and from my To­bag­on­ian African fa­ther.

"If they want to take shots at me it's all right, but I would not stoop to their lev­el."If elect­ed, Roberts said he would en­sure that Dook­er­an's philoso­phies re­main in­tact since it would be sense­less to rein­vent the wheel."New pol­i­tics bot­tom up mod­el, Mr Dook­er­an's philoso­phies (are based) on how pub­lic of­fi­cials should be­have which would in­clude in­tegri­ty, open­ness, hon­esty, trust," he said."What we have to do is take that phi­los­o­phy and put it in­to ac­tion and it is my job to put it in­to ac­tion.."He said in Cab­i­net, uni­ty among COP mem­bers must al­so be dis­played and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills en­hanced.

"In Cab­i­net, we have nev­er met as COP min­is­ters be­fore a Cab­i­net meet­ing to dis­cuss a uni­ver­sal or a col­lec­tive po­si­tion," he said."We must im­prove the com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the mem­bers of Cab­i­net, the MPs who are out­side of Cab­i­net, the sen­a­tors, the coun­sel­lors and the ex­ec­u­tive."Once every two weeks, we are go­ing to make sure we have these meet­ings...It can­not be you in­vite some peo­ple."He said he was left out of the meet­ing at which Dook­er­an an­nounced he was step­ping down as COP's leader.

De­scrib­ing the move as "rather pet­ty and child­ish," Roberts said that if there was dis­agree­ment among mem­bers there was no need for im­ma­tu­ri­ty to be dis­played."We must be­come such a strong par­ty that the PNM coali­tion crum­bles...They don't know who is their leader," he said.Charg­ing that the PNM nei­ther sup­port­ed nor dealt with peo­ple on the ground, Roberts said the COP was go­ing to present "an op­tion" to grass­roots mem­ber­ship of the PNM to join the COP.He said there were ru­mours of a coali­tion be­tween the COP and PNM but once elect­ed he would en­sure that did not ma­te­ri­alise."There have been ru­mours that cer­tain COP ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers have been dis­cussing with the PNM a pos­si­ble coali­tion," Roberts said.

"There will be no dis­cus­sions or ac­com­mo­da­tion with Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Patrick Man­ning, Franklin Khan or any of the lead­er­ship of the PNM."Ac­cord­ing to Roberts, be­fore he de­cid­ed to join the race for po­lit­i­cal leader, the COP was "dy­ing.""Be­fore I de­cid­ed to chal­lenge for lead­er­ship the COP was dy­ing...You could not see us, you did not see our out­er cir­cle of cir­cles, no­body was in­ter­est­ed," he said."All the loy­al peo­ple who built the COP, the found­ing mem­bers, the ac­tivists were just cast aside and on­ly a cer­tain few were pre­tend­ing they are the bas­tions of this COP par­ty."Now that I have jumped in­to the elec­tion race, you could see the COP mak­ing head­lines."We are mov­ing for­ward...I would not say we were dead but we were dor­mant and now we're very much alive."