Yvonne Ba­boolal

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an said he would have pre­ferred if Plan­ning Min­is­ter Mary King "had her say" be­fore she was fired by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. King, a mem­ber of the COP in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion Gov­ern­ment, had her ap­point­ment re­voked yes­ter­day by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards up­on the ad­vice of the PM. King was fired af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tions by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in­to the award of a $100,000 con­tract by her min­istry to Ix­anos Ltd, a fam­i­ly busi­ness she joint­ly owns with her hus­band. Dook­er­an, who nom­i­nat­ed King to be a sen­a­tor, spoke to the me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon af­ter news broke she was fired.

He said: "I think it's a rather sad day. I as­sume the Prime Min­is­ter would have made her judg­ment in seek­ing to main­tain the in­tegri­ty of the par­ty. "I would have pre­ferred her (King) to have her say be­fore such ac­tion was tak­en. "But I be­lieve the PM want­ed to main­tain the in­tegri­ty of the par­ty at all cost." Not­ing the PM's ac­tion must be re­spect­ed, Dook­er­an stressed COP called on King to demit of­fice "pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions." Told that Sport Min­is­ter and COP mem­ber Anil Roberts called out­right for King's res­ig­na­tion, Dook­er­an replied, dis­mis­sive­ly: "Roberts has his own par­ty." Dook­er­an said King was sup­posed to have met with the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive yes­ter­day.

Asked if the COP would seek to re­place King's po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment, he replied: "We haven't reached that stage."

Asked if the fir­ing of a sec­ond COP per­son (Nizam Mo­hammed was re­cent­ly fired as chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion) was an in­dict­ment against the par­ty's con­tin­u­ous es­pous­ing of good moral val­ues and trans­par­ent gov­er­nance, Dook­er­an said: "We had a con­fer­ence last week on coali­tion pol­i­tics. "We are in the process of change and we have to set in place prop­er struc­tures to make it (coali­tion gov­er­nance) ef­fec­tive." Asked if the COP made a wrong choice con­cern­ing King, Dook­er­an said: "All par­ties have to look care­ful­ly at the peo­ple they choose. All par­ties fall short. "We are in a chang­ing process. We will be ex­pect­ing things."