President Says COLA is Not Pushing Opposition’s Agenda

The rollout of COLA’s anti-government campaign, complete with banners and other related propaganda, was done in grand fashion, relatively speaking.  The press conference was held at the Radisson and was carried in its entirety on Love FM as a paid broadcast.  The VIP Room was packed to capacity with standing room only for latecomers.  The scale of the launch begs the question of COLA’s political leaning, as well as its source of funding.  While President Giovanni Brackett was clear in stating that the organization is made up of members who belong to various political parties, he was also distinct in his position that COLA is not a functionary of the opposition.

Reporter

“Is COLA positioning itself as a political party or is it a political pressure group working on behalf of the P.U.P. because then it’s the message that, okay the U.D.P. is selling out the country or betraying the nationalist ideals.  So then, should your supporters then support the P.U.P.?”

Geovanni Brackett

Geovanni Brackett, President COLA

“Well I don’t know, the prime minister asked you in his press conference Jules, how yo get deh.  I think I haftu ask you di same question.  I mean our MC is one of the founding members of COLA but he’s also V.I.P.  Wil Maheia who is our partner and who endorses this campaign is PNP.  Point blank, no.  I don’t know how else to answer it.  It is no.  But if you’re asking about the robust nature of the campaign definitely we plan to do it just like how we were doing it when it was the ‘No to Offshore Drilling’, when we did the ‘No ICJ’, when we go out there against the gun law.  We will give a hundred percent.  We are not going to try to play softball when the government is playing rugby, you can’t expect that.  That’s foolish.  The government has money, the government is coming hard and we believe in our position and our conviction, therefore we will give it our all. What we can say to our voters is this, our members is simply, we need to make political parties take a definitive stand.  By that we mean, we can’t have two parties saying the same thing.  Then what do you have to decide.  So we need to make parties say one: it’s just like in the U.S. you’re either liberal or you’re conservative.  So if you support, the government has to say, to the ICJ, P.N.P., V.I.P., P.U.P. have to say whether they are saying the same thing because we need to know what to vote on.  When people go to vote we should say to any politician, do you support homosexuality?  If you don’t or if you do because I don’t or I do.  Because then if you’re pushing us to go to the ICJ I need to know because I don’t and I don’t want to vote for you if you are saying go to the ICJ.  If you don’t want to build the base now then I can’t support you.  It is not us that are going to tell the people how to vote, it is the political party by their actions and the direction in which they want to take this country will decide.”