Senator Bhoe Tewarie says he would have preferred to see a single Congress of the People (COP) leadership candidate since the party needed to consolidate and pull its support together to expand. Commenting yesterday after the post-Cabinet press conference at the Office of the Prime Minister, St Clair, on the COP leadership race on June 29, Tewarie said he would not endorse anyone and the party should work out its business. “I will wait until nomination day and I will choose and if I decide to support someone I will say but my feeling is you really needed to give the party a chance to lift itself because no one can lift it except those who are committed to COP,” he added. Tewarie’s views indicated he shared aspects of the position of COP leader Prakash Ramadhar who chose to stay in the People’s Partnership (PP) coalition rather than leave.
He said if he supported anyone, it would be based on the fact that the COP needed to understand its future was tied with the UNC and the PP. Tewarie said he would take his own position on the basis of the most reasonable and rational things in the situation. Stressing he would not be guided by anyone or anyone else’s position, Tewarie said there was a context to the entire issue. On views that former leader Winston Dookeran’s anointing of COP’s Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan would divide the party, Tewarie said: “I don’t know why he did that. I am holding back my own position precisely because of that.” He said while Dookeran’s endorsement could be seen as an indictment of Ramadhar, it did not mean Dookeran was correct. He said he did not know what position Dookeran was articulating from or “he could have had a long association with Seepersad-Bachan.”
Tewarie wondered if Seepersad-Bachan lost whether Dookeran would still run for chairman. While Ramadhar needed to do better, he did not think Ramadhar served COP in a deficient way.
Tewarie added: “He inherited a very difficult situation, stepping into the founder’s shoes in a situation when the COP was uncertain Dookeran did not want to be leader or if Dookeran hesitated because someone else declared their candidacy. “When Ramadhar took leadership, it meant he did so in a situation where the party was not sure they wanted to change the leader, although they voted for Ramadhar. “Under his leadership there was some factionalism also, to do with whether COP should be part of PP, and he decided, as a responsible leader, not to pull out of PP.
“That festered too, leading to more factionalism, though he remained firm on his position that the future of the COP and UNC in the PP, and therefore the future of the PP and T&T are tied together, and that is my position.”
He said: “If I support anyone it will be based on the proposition, that the COP needs to understand its future is tied with the UNC and PP, and the future the PP has in T&T is tied to the unification and strengthening of these parties together with other PP members.” Tewarie said it did not matter so much who a leadership contender was but whether COP could focus on something beyond personality, since that caused factionalism and personality contests, sometimes “making things a little raunchy.” Advocating focus on larger issues, Tewarie said T&T needed to move to a different pace and level of existence, owing to social problems, issues with youths, adults’ attitudes and value system breakdowns. He said politics was not a solution but could be a vehicle to give opportunity for that. “Parties should focus on governance issues and strengthening institutions. T&T needs to get beyond factionalism and narrow petty partisan politics,” he added. He said the situation with COP’s Anil Roberts was “quite unfortunate” but there were ways of handling it. He said the COP was right to take its position to suspend Roberts and the Minister was also reasonable to protect his interests.