Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan has for­mal­ly ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion as Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day, Mrs Seep­er­sad-Bachan states that she sub­mit­ted her res­ig­na­tion on Tues­day evening, at a spe­cial meet­ing of the par­ty’s Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive.

She al­so notes that one the par­ty’s Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Lead­ers will be ap­point­ed as in­ter­im Po­lit­i­cal Leader, in ac­cor­dance with the COP con­sti­tu­tion.

The full text of her state­ment, fol­lows…

RES­IG­NA­TION: PO­LIT­I­CAL LEADER, CON­GRESS OF THE PEO­PLE (COP)

At a spe­cial meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive con­vened last evening I sub­mit­ted my res­ig­na­tion as Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).

When I took the man­tle of lead­er­ship, I pledged to ho­n­our the man­date of the COP—“To find en­dur­ing Uni­ty and Strength in our Di­ver­si­ty to­wards a mod­el na­tion where all as­pire to ex­cel­lence.”

Our vi­sion to de­vel­op dig­i­tal­ly dri­ven and eco­nom­i­cal­ly em­pow­ered cit­i­zens who can cre­ate their own wealth and mean­ing­ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in their gov­er­nance is even more rel­e­vant to­day.

We fought the Gen­er­al Elec­tions 2020 be­cause we firm­ly be­lieved in the need to strength­en our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy. I am heart­ened that many con­stituents un­der­stood the im­por­tance of the con­science vote.

I am hum­bled by the many peo­ple who lis­tened and shared their views and con­cerns with me as I moved through the con­stituen­cy St. Au­gus­tine. Re­gard­less of their fi­nal po­lit­i­cal choice, they treat­ed me with re­spect and I could not have asked for more.

The coun­try has tak­en note that we have raised the bar of cam­paign­ing. In this re­gard I want to thank all the COP can­di­dates and their teams for keep­ing to our prin­ci­ples and val­ues. To the COP can­di­dates, you fought the good fight. Cit­i­zens are long­ing for sus­tained en­gage­ment and we have giv­en them the for­mu­la.

In the In­ter­im the Na­tion­al Coun­cil shall ap­point one of the Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Lead­ers to act as Po­lit­i­cal Leader, in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 17.1 of the Par­ty’s Con­sti­tu­tion.

We have start­ed a move­ment of change that will give rise to the 21st cen­tu­ry fu­ture, lead­ing to a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for all cit­i­zens. We must all be­lieve that change will come and that cit­i­zens will be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Good Gov­er­nance, as on­ly then will our na­tion reach its fullest po­ten­tial.

I want to thank all those who sup­port­ed me in my role as Po­lit­i­cal Leader and dur­ing my cam­paign as the COP can­di­date for St. Au­gus­tine.

May God con­tin­ue to bless our great na­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go.

CAR­OLYN SEEP­ER­SAD-BACHAN