Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Win­ston Dook­er­an has ex­pressed dis­be­lief over state­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning that an or­gan­i­sa­tion was plot­ting to kill him. Speak­ing to COP sup­port­ers at Canque Vil­lage, Biche, on Tues­day night, Dook­er­an ac­cused Man­ning of us­ing "the pol­i­tics of fear" to win sup­port. He said Man­ning must ex­plain why it took him more than a year to dis­close the al­leged plot. He al­so called on Man­ning to pro­vide the facts of the mat­ter and to say why he did not re­port it to the po­lice.

Dook­er­an said a plot to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter was a se­ri­ous na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ter and Man­ning was treat­ing the is­sue friv­o­lous­ly as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. "The Prime Min­is­ter is us­ing the pol­i­tics of fear. He has sud­den­ly de­cid­ed that he is up for as­sas­si­na­tion by an un­known group. He said if he had re­port­ed the mat­ter, there would have been blood­shed on the streets. Man­ning con­coct­ed his sto­ry. But if the sto­ry is true, he has to tell us why it took him a year to say it," Dook­er­an said.

He claimed that Man­ning was try­ing to in­stil fear in the pop­u­la­tion so that he could win sym­pa­thet­ic sup­port. "This is a sin­is­ter po­lit­i­cal plot by Man­ning to cre­ate fear, to have se­cre­cy and ig­no­rance. We are gripped in this pol­i­tics of fear. But we in the con­gress be­lieve that politi­cians must give up this type of pol­i­tics which sur­vives by mak­ing peo­ple fright­ened and ig­no­rant. We want to in­tro­duce a mes­sage of the pol­i­tics of hope," Dook­er­an said.

Dook­er­an al­so took stabs at Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day, who he said was al­so us­ing pol­i­tics of fear by mak­ing al­le­ga­tions of eth­nic cleans­ing. "Re­cent­ly we had an is­sue of eth­nic cleans­ing and in­flam­ma­to­ry re­marks by the Op­po­si­tion. We are liv­ing in har­mo­ny, but they have in­tro­duced the con­cept of eth­nic con­flict, in­flam­ing racial ten­sion. It is the ex­er­cise of the pol­i­tics of fear and we must stop this at once," Dook­er­an said. He said politi­cians must work to stop racial ten­sion.

"This plan of rais­ing racial ten­sions is not a plan by Pan­day alone. It is a plan by Man­ning and Pan­day to­geth­er. Once they raise the is­sue of race, both of them feel they can get their blocks ag­i­tat­ed. COP is here with an al­ter­na­tive. "In this par­ty, we have men and women who have fought the bat­tles. We want to change this hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment of race to an en­vi­ron­ment of rea­son," Dook­er­an said.