Dr Anirudh Ma­habir has been elect­ed in the sub­stan­tive po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple.

Ma­habir, who has been the act­ing leader since the res­ig­na­tion of St Au­gus­tine Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Prakash Ra­mad­har in April, was nom­i­nat­ed and elect­ed un­op­posed for the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader at a spe­cial Na­tion­al As­sem­bly meet­ing held at the COP's Char­lieville of­fice.

The par­ty's gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Clyde Weath­er­head, said the process of elect­ing Ma­habir took place on Sat­ur­day with­out any ma­jor hic­cups.

He said: "The elec­tion process was ex­treme­ly ef­fi­cient as there was just one po­si­tion to be filled, that of the po­lit­i­cal leader." Weath­er­head said Ma­habir will be in the post un­til June 2017–the end of the cur­rent term of of­fice.

In June 2017, the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader will again be up for con­sid­er­a­tion for a new term of of­fice to run from 2017 to 2020.

Com­ment­ing on his role as leader Weath­er­head said Ma­habir was look­ing for­ward to the chal­lenges that lay ahead.He said: "Dr Ma­habir is look­ing for­ward to re­build­ing the par­ty dur­ing this pe­ri­od of his tenure as po­lit­i­cal leader un­til June."

Weath­er­head not­ed that Ma­habir would be in of­fice dur­ing the time that the COP cel­e­brat­ed ten years as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.He said: "In Sep­tem­ber, COP will turn ten years old and Dr Ma­habir wil be there as leader for this spe­cial oc­ca­sion in the par­ty's his­to­ry."