Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Al­though he ad­mit­ted the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion was not done ac­cord­ing to the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion, Prakash Ra­mad­har said he took con­trol of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) to en­sure its sur­vival.

His ap­point­ment as in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader by out­go­ing in­ter­im leader Kirt Sin­nette was yes­ter­day chal­lenged by long-stand­ing mem­ber Wen­dell Ever­s­ley.

Speak­ing out­side of the Red House, Port-of-Spain, Ever­s­ley bran­dished a doc­u­ment which he said was the COP’s con­sti­tu­tion.

He point­ed to sec­tion 17 which states, “Where the Of­fice of Po­lit­i­cal Leader is va­cant for any rea­son oth­er than the end of the term of of­fice, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil can sum­mon the Spe­cial Con­fer­ence of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly with­in 90 days of the date of such of­fice be­ing va­cat­ed for the elec­tion of a Po­lit­i­cal Leader. In the in­ter­im, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil shall ap­point one of the Deputy Lead­ers to act as Po­lit­i­cal Leader.”

Ever­s­ley, who said he is a deputy leader of the par­ty, ar­gued, “So out here in the pub­lic do­main where Prakash Ra­mad­har is go­ing about, and oth­er mem­bers are say­ing Prakash Ra­mad­har is the in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader of the COP, that is not true. You can­not re­sign as an in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader and then ap­point some­body as po­lit­i­cal leader.”

Ever­s­ley won­dered when Ra­mad­har was ap­point­ed as a deputy leader to be able to step in­to the lead­er­ship role.

Ra­mad­har did not de­ny that his ap­point­ment de­vi­at­ed from the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­to­cols.

He ex­plained that on De­cem­ber 17, the day of Sin­nette’s res­ig­na­tion, “I was ap­point­ed deputy po­lit­i­cal leader by Mr Sinette and then ap­point­ed me act­ing po­lit­i­cal leader as he re­signed as po­lit­i­cal leader, that’s how it was done.”

The for­mer St Au­gus­tine MP said it’s been at least four years since the con­sti­tu­tion was up­held in the par­ty.

“So, the con­sti­tu­tion Mr Ever­s­ley is speak­ing about, he should be asked when any of it was obeyed? When last there was an elec­tion in the par­ty? When was it that they had a quo­rum for the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive to make de­ci­sions on be­half of the par­ty? When last did they call and suc­cess­ful­ly have a quo­rum for the Na­tion­al Coun­cil? And the an­swer was years ago,” Ra­mad­har said de­fi­ant­ly.

He said fol­low­ing the con­sti­tu­tion in the COP’s cur­rent state would be im­prac­ti­cal.

“He who sits on the ex­ec­u­tive should know full well that they have not abid­ed by a sin­gle re­quire­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion for the ex­ec­u­tive to be com­prised and cer­tain­ly, now to in­sist that the Na­tion­al Coun­cil rat­i­fy when they have not been able to get a quo­rum to do so is an im­pos­si­bil­i­ty,” Ra­mad­har said.

He added that his ap­point­ment as leader was in the best in­ter­est of the par­ty.

Ear­li­er, Ever­s­ley had been asked to name the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive of the par­ty, but he could on­ly re­veal him­self as deputy leader and Lons­dale Williams as in­ter­im chair­man.

Ra­mad­har al­leged that Ever­s­ley was re­moved as a deputy leader by Sin­nette and he could un­der­stand his be­ing hurt.

How­ev­er, Ever­s­ley al­so wants Ra­mad­har to re­veal if he is work­ing be­hind the scenes to form an­oth­er al­liance with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Hold­ing an­oth­er doc­u­ment to the cam­era, he said he found it strange that Ra­mad­har, up­on as­sum­ing lead­er­ship, wrote to Williams re­quest­ing de­tails of the par­ty’s op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing its fi­nan­cials.

He said days ear­li­er, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the UNC would on­ly en­ter­tain al­liances with par­ties that can show a sound struc­ture and its strengths.

Ra­mad­har did not take too kind­ly to Ever­s­ley’s ac­cu­sa­tions.

“What a clown! What a clown to sug­gest that,” he said.

“Any­body en­ter­ing an or­ga­ni­za­tion is en­ti­tled to know the work they have done, what ca­pac­i­ty there is, the re­ports of the chair­man him­self, how many meet­ings were called, did they have the nec­es­sary quo­rum. Which po­si­tions of the ex­ec­u­tive are func­tion­al and what work they have done, so we can know the strengths and weak­ness­es of the par­ty, then you can as­sess what needs to be done.

“What fool­ish­ness is he speak­ing about? On what ba­sis is he mak­ing that claim? This is in­for­ma­tion to bring the par­ty back to its right­ful place.”

Williams al­so chal­lenged Ra­mad­har’s ap­point­ment which said is yet to be rat­i­fied by the ex­ec­u­tive.

He said the fi­nan­cial state­ments of the par­ty sought by Ra­mad­har will be of­fi­cial­ly re­quest­ed at the par­ty’s next ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing.

Ra­mad­har said the par­ty is work­ing dili­gent­ly to put to rest any con­fu­sion about its lead­er­ship struc­ture.