Ken Ali

Win­ston Dook­er­an, leader of Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), is un­like­ly to face the May 24 polls. The door has been left wide open for Dook­er­an to con­test an Op­po­si­tion "safe seat," but there were strong in­di­ca­tions last night that he would not present him­self to the elec­torate. The Dook­er­an stun­ner emerged as COP and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ar­rived at an agree­ment about seat-shar­ing, af­ter marathon dis­cus­sions Thurs­day night and yes­ter­day. The ac­cord paves the way for the UNC to con­test most of its cur­rent­ly-held 15 "safe seats."

Apart from Dook­er­an, an­oth­er top-ranked COP of­fi­cial is ear­marked to con­test a tra­di­tion­al Op­po­si­tion con­stituen­cy. Dook­er­an pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed the St Au­gus­tine seat. The UNC is al­so like­ly to field can­di­dates in a ma­jor­i­ty of the nine mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies. Al­ready, the par­ty has an­nounced Dr Fuad Khan for Barataria/San Juan and Clifton De Coteau for Princes Town South/Table­land, which is ex­pect­ed to be re­named Table­land/Moru­ga. COP's Mar­lene Coudray is slat­ed to con­test San Fer­nan­do West, in a re­play of the No­vem­ber 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion. The par­ty is al­so like­ly to present can­di­dates for cer­tain swing con­stituen­cies along the East-West Cor­ri­dor. Gen­er­al­ly, the UNC walked away with the li­on's share of seats in the ac­cord.

Both Dook­er­an and UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day her­ald­ed the agree­ment. Ne­go­tia­tors al­so con­firmed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would be the prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date. UNC of­fi­cials said par­ty can­di­dates could give their leader a ma­jor­i­ty of seats in the 41-mem­ber House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Sources last night said that bar­gain­ing was "tough and some­times dif­fi­cult," but that "in the end, both sides were hap­py." A COP source said the par­ty's lead­er­ship is "look­ing for­ward to play­ing a role in gov­ern­ment." The UNC is ex­pect­ed to foot most of the elec­tion­eer­ing costs. De­tails of the agree­ment are like­ly to be re­vealed with­in the next few days.