Conflict in the People's Partnership: COP coalition muscle

Congress of the Lent People Leader Prakash Ramadhar

Lent is over and like the Congress of the People (COP) we going down San Fernando. The issue is settled. The COP has scored a rare victory within the People's Partnership and the embattled mayor will move to safer ground. Still this was an odd squabble. It revealed the crassness of our politics, the Partnership's grab for power and the challenges of holding on to it.

Like Calypso Rose in 1977, Port of Spain was too jammed for the COP leader's comfort and San Fernando offered more leg-room. But the oddity of the squabble started with the COP leader describing the San Fernando Mayor's position as part of the "assets of the COP".

Rod Blagogevich

Apparently in the Fyzabad carve-up, that elected office was parceled out to the COP, an affront to the city's 1996 Standing Orders. Back-office deals involving public office and the insistence on them as matters of contract are repulsive to good governance. They are no different in character from the attempt to sell Obama's former US senate seat, for which Rod Blagogevich will spend 14 years in prison.

Mayor of the City of San Fernando Marlene Coudray

Even before the Coudray-crossover the COP had plenty philosophical ground to challenge its co-parties in the Partnership. Only on rare occasions the party's leadership raised its voice. Even when the party questioned the Government, the COP MPs remained silent or sided with the Government. Some of that was a consequence of collective responsibility, but much of it was self-preservation. Maybe in the COP back-office there is still a party which is distinguishable from its UNC parent, but in Government the COP has morphed.

Much of the COP's concessions of character are rooted in the 2007 failure to land a seat. With impatience for power, in 2010 the COP mapped a shortcut. And as with shortcuts the party's current coordinates suggest that it is lost. The party will be challenged to identify a single slice of progress the Partnership government has made or embarked upon, notwithstanding a brazen State of Emergency, a curfew and billions already spent. The party will also find the same-old, same-old political playbook inconsistent with its self-styled new politics.