Starting today until July 9, the Sunday Guardian will feature the three female candidates for political leader of the Congress of the People (COP)—Dr Sharon-Ann Gopaul-McNicol, Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan and Nicole Dyer-Griffith.
In 2006, the COP was formed by Winston Dookeran. By 2007, when a general election was called, the party had gained some momentum on the political landscape but was unsuccessful in winning a seat. It did, however, amass 148,041 votes. In 2010, the party won six seats under the People’s Partnership. In 2011, Dookeran stepped down as political leader. Prakash Ramadhar led the party from then until February this year. Dr Anirudh Mahabir has since been acting.
Today, we highlight Gopaul-McNicol. She said the best part of politics is being on the ground level with the people, changing their lives through relevant social/political interventions. By the time she was 27, Gopaul-McNicol had already obtained a bachelor’s degree, three master’s and a doctorate.
Dr Sharon-Ann Gopaul-McNicol says now is not the time for an on-the-job-trainee to rebuild the COP and to govern T&T.
“We need an experienced person who knows exactly what has to be done. I do. Specifically, in the case of the COP, such a leader has to be true to the vision and mission that the COP was founded on and who remained loyal to these founding principles.”
She said in keeping with the COP’s constitution, a leader has to be one who has never brought the COP into disrepute either by being sued and found guilty or by scandalising the COP during the 2010 to 2015 era.
“So when I was asked again by my COP colleagues to throw my hat in the ring, I realised that I am one of few people and certainly the only candidate where there is a clear match and fit in what is needed to rebuild our party and our country. So, here I am.”
Gopaul, a licenced psychologist, said some of the COP’s leaders went in their own direction but the core COP members were still here waiting for the right leader to emerge.
She said: “I am pleased that after 31 years post my doctorate, I still demonstrate the very qualities that I have always sought in a leader. The COP members know that several male and female contenders for leadership have compromised the COP by landing themselves in illegal and unethical quagmires. I am not one of those and would never be.”
Asked whether the party was still relevant, she said the COP’s policies and models to solve the problems of the nation were all very relevant today as they were ten years ago.
Youth will be in front line
Ten years ago, she said the love for the party was real. COP members were never married to a party but to their country first—a remarkable transformation in T&T politics, she added.
On breathing new life into the COP, Gopaul-McNicol said it was not going to be impossible because when the COP was born in 2006, nowhere in the region was a party so right in its policies, practices and way of being with its members.
“There was no racial divisiveness which attracted then and continues to attract people searching for a safe political engine to drive this country.
“As far as I was aware, there was no tolerance for corruption and unethical conduct and that is why the COP leadership was punished by its members in the 2015 election when they veered away from the principles of the party.”
She said for those reasons, the party attracted many young people and in her conversations around the country, she noted that they bring a new perspective to challenges.
“As such, in my administration one would see in the front line the presence of our talented youths who will be part of the rebuilding of our party and our country so they will be part of the solution.”
She plans to have a shadow cabinet with shadow ministers and junior shadow ministers as there will be shadow MPs and junior shadow MPs for every constituency.
Building ground support
If successful, she said she immediately plans to build a strong ground support and said once a new National Executive and a new National Council are established she will have to begin the process in building the ground support base of the COP from the ground up.
“This will be a fundamental change from the way the COP engaged its members politically, which was 80 per cent of its time in the media and 20 per cent on the ground.
“The reverse will be actualised in this new administration. So 70 per cent to 80 per cent will be on the ground.”
She said potential candidates for local and general elections will be trained early.
“By exciting some members who were experts in their own right in just about every ministry to come back to the fold of the COP and serve as shadow ministers would resonate once more to the citizens of T&T that we know what has to be done to address the problems that the average man and woman in the street face every day,” she added.
She said she was big into transformational politics which involves changing all the colonial structures that are crippling society.
(Next week we feature Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan)