KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Po­lit­i­cal Leader Prakash Ra­mad­har says he will break his si­lence ear­ly this week on not be­ing ap­point­ed to ei­ther a min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion or a Sen­ate seat in the new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In a brief re­sponse to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har said he was ex­pect­ed to meet with the COP mem­ber­ship be­fore mak­ing a pub­lic state­ment.

All eyes were on Fri­day’s open­ing of the 13th Re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) re­turned to gov­ern­ment and re­sumed con­trol of the Red House. With sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors yet to be sworn in, Ra­mad­har—wide­ly ex­pect­ed to be among them—was no­tably ab­sent from the list.

A for­mer min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs un­der Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment (2010–2015), Ra­mad­har played a key role in the UNC through his lead­er­ship of the COP and ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Coali­tion of In­ter­est.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­it­er­at­ed re­marks she made out­side of Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, stat­ing, “There is a space and place for every­one.” How­ev­er, she added that the mat­ter of ap­point­ments was one for the par­ty to han­dle.

Ra­mad­har, an at­tor­ney, re­turned as COP leader ahead of the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion in what was seen as a strate­gic move to re­vive the par­ty and bol­ster the UNC-led coali­tion. The part­ner­ship aimed to con­sol­i­date op­po­si­tion sup­port against the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). How­ev­er, the two COP can­di­dates were de­feat­ed by the PNM at the polls last month.

De­spite elec­toral loss­es among the sup­port­ing coali­tion par­ties, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­point­ed Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) founder Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der as a ju­nior min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing—al­though his par­ty al­so failed to win any seats.