While the Congress of the People (COP) believes National Security Minister Jack Warner should step down while his FIFA issues are ongoing, the issue of leaving the coalition People's Partnership does not arise, says COP leader Prakash Ramadhar. Ramadhar issued a statement yesterday after acting COP chairman Vernon de Lima's move to table a motion on Warner for debate on Sunday. This calls for the Prime Minister to remove Warner from the Cabinet, failing which the COP will "distance itself completely" from the PP.
De Lima presented the motion at Monday's COP executive meeting. There was no feedback from the 31 members present and a "dead silence" when it arose, a COP official said. Yesterday, in a statement on De Lima's motion, Ramadhar said when Warner's FIFA issues arose COP's executive at the time issued a position on the matter of Warner's Cabinet status.
Ramadhar said, "The COP stated then and continued to hold that Mr Warner should have stepped aside from his ministerial position until the investigations into the matter were concluded and decisions had been made on his role in the matter and culpability or otherwise." "There is no new situation concerning this matter that has arisen since the COP first expressed its position on it."
Ramadhar said whether Warner should be removed as a minister was in the hands of the Prime Minister and not the COP. "Therefore, the issue of leaving the partnership simply does not arise." Meanwhile, political analyst Hamid Ghany felt De Lima had decided to take his own views on Warner and try to get the COP behind him on that . Ghany said the political risk is whether the party would agree to walk away from the partnership or not.
"I see it as someone seeking to get his party to stand behind him on that issue. A lot more is at stake as this has the potential to create divisions within COP as there may be conflicting views on this. But it seems De Lima wants them to walk out. I'm not surprised he's decided to raise it in this particular way," Ghany added.
Analyst Bishnu Ragoonath said, "The fact they (COP) went the route of this motion suggests there's a push within COP to get this issue seriously on the agenda. I don't think the leader or COP MPs in Government would have suggested so strong a motion."
"But it's reached the agenda, suggesting there's already a divide in COP...If it's passed, COP will have to decide if it's a united or divided party since COP MPs in Government may not want to leave that. They'll have to decide if to stay with COP or be a COP faction."