DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

There is no oth­er op­tion, but for the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to unite forces to stand against the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, says COP po­lit­i­cal leader Win­ston Dook­er­an. Dook­er­an made the state­ment while ad­dress­ing the me­dia sub­se­quent to the par­ty's Na­tion­al Coun­cil meet­ing at its Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, Char­lieville, yes­ter­day. "There is no op­tion...we have to agree," he said. "The na­tion re­quires us to come to­geth­er in or­der to pro­vide that op­tion...and what­ev­er ob­sta­cles are in the way, and what­ev­er hur­dles we have to over­come, I am pre­pared to work to make it hap­pen." Dook­er­an was re­spond­ing to the ques­tion that if the uni­ty talks be­tween the UNC and COP failed, what was his next step?

Dook­er­an is sched­uled to meet with UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to­day. He said the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to deep­en the talks on uni­ty and de­cide a way for­ward. Af­ter these talks, he added that they would have de­tailed di­a­logue on po­lit­i­cal is­sues con­cern­ing seat al­lo­ca­tion, a com­mon pol­i­cy po­si­tion and a joint cam­paign strat­e­gy ap­proach. Ques­tioned whether the uni­ty talks were mov­ing in a par­al­lel di­rec­tion, Dook­er­an said: "This was an is­sue that has been raised but we are seek­ing to ad­dress that. "Time is not on our side...we have to fast track and de­vel­op our pro­pos­als be­cause of the snap elec­tion," he said. "It is with our hope and ex­pec­ta­tion, how­ev­er, that we would come to a com­mon un­der­stand­ing on these is­sues as we pre­pare for the po­lit­i­cal bat­tle be­fore us."

Asked if he was con­cerned about Per­sad-Bisses­sar's dri­ve to be­come the next Prime Min­is­ter, Dook­er­an said: "Giv­en the enor­mi­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, no ob­sta­cles must be put in the way and no hur­dles that we can­not over­come in the process of find­ing the right per­son." While the PNM was more than halfway through their screen­ing process and the UNC would be­gin to­mor­row, Dook­er­an said COP's screen­ing of can­di­dates would be­gin lat­er this week, but he hoped to come to a "com­mon pro­ce­dure with all par­ties." Asked how he felt about los­ing an­oth­er mem­ber–De­vant Maraj to UNC on Fri­day– he said: "It re­al­ly does not mat­ter, be­cause in the end we are com­ing with a com­mon front, com­mon can­di­dates and a com­mon op­tion...each in­di­vid­ual would po­si­tion where he/she is best..."

Asked what he thinks about Man­ning com­ment­ing that he was on his way out, Dook­er­an said: "I have to hes­i­tate to an­swer be­cause I am not sure whether the head­line was cor­rect, but if he is not on his way out, we'll try to help him to get out," to the sounds of loud cheers and laugh­ter. He added that Man­ning's call for a snap elec­tion was an at­tempt to un­lock democ­ra­cy, but "peo­ple would have to get locked up in the process."