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Congress of the People (COP) leader Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan says the party is preparing to fight the next general election is all 41 constituencies. Speaking at a press conference as the new executive was installed a the St Augustine South Community Centre yesterday, she said the party was aware there was a lot of work to be done.
“As I have said over and over, it’s about connecting with the members of our party and rebuilding the trust and confidence in the COP,” Seepersad-Bachan said. She shot down detractors who have described the party as dead, saying this was far from the truth.
“I don’t understand how the COP could be dead in their minds and they are alive...they are alive with ideas in their minds of what the COP is supposed to be doing.
“If you listen to them, what we need to do, what we are not doing, where we are supposed to be going, we have been taking all those comments on board. So the mere idea that the COP continues to be mentioned over and over by the very same people who continue to say that we are dead is amazing, so I don’t really pay too much heed to that,” Seepersad-Bachan said.
She said while there were a lot of people who had expressed interest in the party, they firstly wanted a have a sense of its plans before joining or rejoining the COP. Saying the COP was formed within a space of less than a year, Seepersad-Bachan said the party was more than ready to fight 41 seats.
“I don’t see why we can’t be ready and willing to fight 41 seats. It all depends on what we do going forward as a party,” she added.
More importantly, she said it was critical to reach those who were disenchanted because they had felt a sense of disconnect.
“They felt they have been pushed out of the party and in reality there is a certain amount of credence to that claim that is made by many...that they were not listened to,” she said.
She agreed the party had been dormant for a while, following which it had reached its lowest point, but added it was time for revitalising and rebranding.
“We need to pick up the pieces and move forward. I don’t think people have ever lost confidence in the COP. I don’t think they have ever lost their passion for the COP. There is a nostalgia out there for the COP and there is this yearning that we come back together as one because they liked what the party stood for,” she said. “But their problem is whether we still stand along those lines and we saw some faces coming back to the party...those who were not here before and we have not even gone out on a membership drive as yet.”
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