Congress of the People (COP) leader Winston Dookeran aimed his political guns on Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning Tuesday night calling the opposition leader and prime minister "voices of the past".Speaking at a political meeting in Curepe, he said it is time for both men to leave the political scene and promised to "give them all the dignity that must be afforded those who have served the people in the past."
Commenting on the meeting Tuesday between Manning and Panday to discuss crime and constitutional reform, Dookeran said if they wanted a solution to crime all they had to do was ask the COP.
"We could have saved all the fanfare that has taken place in that charade" which he described as "a farcical attempt to continue to fool the people of the land into believing that in their hands lies the solution to the problems when they have been the cause of the failure in Trinidad and Tobago."
He suggested that they are political naive to believe that they can continue to keep "their respective flocks in check". Dookeran said the only reason the two got together is because they saw their constituencies drifting away and determined that an alliance would be the best way to deal with the problem.
Dookeran rejected the statements to the media that they offered following their talks and said if they want to have any integrity they must reveal "the secret agenda" of that meeting.
"For too long we have been fooled and for some time thought that there was hope, but time has passed, the days are over, a new generation is on the scene, a new dynamics is in our country," Dookeran said.
He added, "We can no longer remain a country in which we simply talk about our ills...We in the COP tell you this is the time for action and we shall lead this country out of the mire it has found itself."
Dookeran raised the issue of political unity, which he has pledged to pursue saying "we want unity in action and not unity in rhetoric....And when I say unity I mean unity of all the peoples in the country" based the thoughts of hundreds who supported the fast of Prakash Ramahdar and Lincoln Douglas in Woodford Square.
He said, "We are blessed to be living in a country where our people are united but regrettably our nation is divided" adding that the division is the deliberate work of the ruling party and the official opposition.
The COP leader said the PNM-UNC alliance is running scared of the COP "so they have come together to keep us out of the politics of the future...that is their secret agenda."
He urged citizens not to allow that and predicted that COP will take control of government and defend the nation's freedom, which he said is under threat.
He reminded his audience of his role as deputy Prime Minister in 1990 to help save the nation from a gang of insurrectionists who had taken control of the Parliament.
"Our freedom is being replaced by fear," Dookeran said, adding that Manning and Panday are trying to exploit that fear to force the executive presidency and constitutional reform on the people.
He pledged that "your constitution shall never be changed unless it is the sovereign will of the people of Trinidad and Tobago and we shall start a campaign here and now to ensure that the rights of the constitution is yours.
"It does not belong to the two goodly gentlemen...and it doesn’t belong to all those in Parliament who brag about having seats and we not having any seats. I say to them, you sit on your seats and we will stand up for the people of Trinidad and Tobago," Dookeran said.
"Today...as your leader for now, I can say with a great deal of confidence, that the only party that is the genuine party of unity in Trinidad and Tobago is the Congress of the People. We have carved our way into the consciousness of the people of this nation and now we stand ready to take the leadership of this nation and the unity of our nation," Dookeran said.
He pledged a new kind of politics based on fundamental truths, which he said are no longer part of the nation's politics.
"A minister can lie today, and tomorrow the next minister can lie a little more because lying has become part of the governing process. That is why nobody believes what took place there today because there is no truth," he said.
Dookeran said on Nov. 15 COP will open its Port of Spain office that it will call Flagship House "because we believe in this nation that we can have one people, one nation, one flag to unite all of us."
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