Gail Alexan­der

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) is fix­ing a new date to present its Peo­ple's Char­ter doc­u­ment to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), fol­low­ing a re­cent re­newed re­quest from the UNC to dis­cuss it, COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Dook­er­an at 12.50 pm, said he had "two min­utes ago" re­ceived a let­ter from UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day seek­ing to meet on the doc­u­ment. Pan­day said yes­ter­day fol­low­ing last week Tues­day's abort­ed uni­ty meet­ing be­tween both par­ties, UNC wrote Dook­er­an stat­ing the UNC was pre­pared to dis­cuss COP's Peo­ple's Char­ter doc­u­ment, as COP had want­ed to. UNC al­so in­clud­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form on the agen­da. "We're await­ing a re­ply and if they agree, that's the way we'll go," Pan­day added yes­ter­day. Dook­er­an sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed that UNC had asked for COP to make a pre­sen­ta­tion on the char­ter, "so I'll get them to or­gan­ise a pre­sen­ta­tion for this," Dook­er­an added be­tween meet­ings yes­ter­day.

Last week Tues­day's ini­tial UNC meet­ing with COP to dis­cuss the char­ter doc­u­ment and a pos­si­ble way for­ward was called off by UNC. The lat­ter ac­cused COP of mak­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­marks about a "Man­day" con­sti­tu­tion fol­low­ing the re­cent meet­ing be­tween Pan­day and Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. UNC Deputy Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called off her planned ap­pear­ance at a COP ral­ly last week­end due to COP's re­marks. Dook­er­an, at the ral­ly, urged cit­i­zens to rise up and re­move the Gov­ern­ment. On Mon­day, Pan­day said: "I'm very glad oth­er peo­ple share my views. I've said the same for a very long time now. The prob­lem is though, I think we have passed the talk­ing point and since there is agree­ment that we have the same views, what should hap­pen now is that there must be a meet­ing to or­gan­ise how to put this in­to ef­fect."

Pan­day on Mon­day evening–at a fo­rum at­tend­ed by COP's Stephen Kan­gal–called for "more uni­fied and strength­ened ef­forts" against the prop­er­ty tax. Pan­day said rifts be­tween COP and UNC mem­bers need­ed to be shelved in that fight and he was will­ing to fa­cil­i­tate di­a­logue among mem­bers of both groups. Yes­ter­day, COP deputy leader, Robert May­ers, said: "We re­main open to meet­ing with the UNC. We had in­vit­ed UNC's Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to last week's prop­er­ty tax ral­ly but she didn't come."