COP to reiterate support for Khadijah Ameen at meeting in Felicity

Khadijah Ameen walks in Chagunas West with PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar
 and Chaguanas Mayor Orland Nagassar

The leader of the Congress of the People (COP) told reporters Sunday he is supporting Khadijah Ameen, the United National Congress (UNC) candidate in the Chaguanas West by-election.

This is in keeping with a pledge Prakash Ramadhar made publicly stating that the COP would support the candidate selected by its partnership member and that the party would stand in support of the partnership.

He also said previously that COp had decided that there would be one partnership candidate in the byelection and that the UNC would nominate the candidate since the party held the seat.

Ramadhar reiterated that Sunday. "We the COP believe that our word is our bond and we agreed in 2010 and coming together with the People’s Partnership that where one of our partners put forward a candidate that all the other partners in the partnership should support that candidate.

“The UNC having had discussions with us and it was decided that the UNC shall put forward a candidate, it is our duty, under our agreement, to support that candidate and that is what we did,” he said. 

Ramadhar said the party has 5,000 supporters in the Chaguanas West constituency and he has invited them and other residents to attend a COP meeting on Tuesday evening at Felicity Hindu School at which COP would endorse Ameen.

"It is about re-establishing support and the assistance of that support in winning the election come the 29th of July on behalf of the UNC and certainly on behalf of the partnership," he said. "We shall support the candidate of the UNC working within the context of the partnership agreement."

Ramadhar also stated that unless the partnership rules change he cannot see how Jack Warner's Independent Liberal Party (ILP) could expect to join the partnership.

“The partnership agreement which we are now respecting...says that when a partner puts a candidate the others have to support, so it can’t be that you are contesting against a partner and then say you want to join in partnership...That is a contradiction mathematically impossible," he said.