The United National Congress (UNC) and the Congress of the People (COP) are to meet face-to-face today to vent their concerns about the eight-month-old People’s Partnership Government. Chairman of the COP, former national security minister Joseph Toney, said this in an interview with reporters after yesterday’s national council meeting at the party’s Charlieville office in central Trinidad.
Toney said all the chairmen of the five units of the People’s Partnership are expected to attend. Apart from the UNC and the COP, other units of the People’s Partnership are the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), the Tobago Organisation of the People (TOP) and the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC).
Today’s meeting at the Henry Street, Port- of-Spain, office of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union, will be chaired by government senator David Abdulah, of the MSJ. It is scheduled to commence at 3 o’clock this afternoon. Toney said he had been calling for today’s meeting for months. He said he would attend “with an open mind.”
Toney stressed that there must be some forum within the People’s Partnership for unit members to have a say. “We are going to sit and talk and chart a (new) way forward, so that members of the PP can have a say and can have direct link with the policymakers of the country,” Toney added. He said because of that development, the request by UNC chairman, Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner, to meet with him was now not necessary.
“That is totally irrelevant at this point in time,” he added. Toney said he agreed with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar that the differences between the two units of the People’s Partnership were not a threat to the stability of the Government. “There will be disagreements but I believe in dialogue, who believe in talking out matters and the members of the partnership are listening,” he said.
Toney said he was “very optimistic that this step (dialogue at OWTU) will ensure that the units that make up the PP feel all inclusive, that they have a role and a function to play in the direction of any policy initiative of the Government.” He stressed the COP was not about to leave the People’s Partnership.
“We are a committed member of the People’s Partnership and we shall and will continue in the PP,” he said. “Members of the COP, as you would have heard over the last couple of months, have issues and I welcome this initiative (meeting)...it is what I have been calling for.”
Asked if the COP discussed “internal rumblings” within the party, Toney responded: “Well, I didn’t pick up any internal rumblings of the party...We had a very constructive meeting, a very long and a very detailed meeting.” Toney then dismissed a newspaper report which claimed that Sport and Youth Affairs Minister Anil Roberts was seeking to unseat Finance Minister Winston Dookeran as political leader of the COP.
He said the report “was regarded as a major joke at our national council meeting this morning...It was laughed at heartily by many, many people.” Asked if there was any truth in the report, Toney quickly responded: “I don’t know if there is any truth in it.” Toney said based on Dookeran’s reaction to the report during the meeting, it was clear that he was “here to stay, to be a member of the party.” Toney said there was much support for Dookeran during the meeting. He said election for a new political leader was expected “sometime between May and July this year.”
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