To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The ul­ti­mate sur­vivor is prob­a­bly as good a way to re­fer to Sen­a­tor Wade Mark as it is pos­si­ble to find. At the end of his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, when­ev­er that comes, he would have quite a tale to tell. He was the orig­i­nal non-In­do-Trinida­di­an en­trant in­to the UNC sen­a­to­r­i­al team, and this would be dis­tinct from John Humphrey in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, way back when. Mr Mark made it through var­i­ous in­car­na­tions of the par­ty af­ter the ex­per­i­ment by the In­do-Trinida­di­an po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy in the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion flopped. He has not had it easy. Even as a grand loy­al­ist to Bas­deo Pan­day he was nev­er giv­en a safe seat in cen­tral or south Trinidad and failed to win one on the cou­ple oc­ca­sions he con­test­ed for the par­ty. Nonethe­less, he was not cast aside but giv­en sen­a­to­r­i­al po­si­tions and was even made chair­man of the par­ty and most re­cent­ly deputy po­lit­i­cal leader. Mr Mark even sur­vived that pe­ri­od when, as a mem­ber of the Team Uni­ty plat­form, he was a suc­cess­ful can­di­date.

But when the di­vi­sion came be­tween Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Mr Pan­day, he knew where he stood and ad­just­ed his po­si­tion to suit the in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal move­ments. It is an ad­just­ment he has re­peat­ed this time around. Hav­ing been a staunch Pan­day sup­port­er be­fore the elec­tion and in­deed he was on the slate of his then leader, Sen­a­tor Mark quick­ly sized up the sit­u­a­tion in the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar vic­to­ry pe­ri­od and ob­vi­ous­ly made him­self suf­fi­cient­ly avail­able for a new lease on life in the Sen­ate. Un­doubt­ed­ly his record of many ag­gres­sive in­ter­ven­tions in the Sen­ate over the years must have in­flu­enced the new leader of the UNC to re­tain him for this very im­por­tant pe­ri­od in the life of the par­ty as it seeks to pre­pare it­self to chal­lenge for the gov­ern­ment. Sen­a­tor Mark's sur­vival is even more sig­nif­i­cant in that it has hap­pened against the de­sire of par­ty chair­man Jack Warn­er.

The lat­ter made no at­tempt to hide be­ing against Mr Mark's re­ten­tion, in­di­cat­ing that the mem­ber­ship had vot­ed for change and un­doubt­ed­ly with the sen­a­tor be­ing such a loy­al­ist of Mr Pan­day, it was a sig­nal to leave Mr Mark be­hind. But Mr Mark has sur­vived. Ques­tion is: is this dif­fer­ing view be­tween the po­lit­i­cal leader and the chair­man, and one made so pub­lic, an in­di­ca­tion of con­flict that will come to the new ad­min­is­tra­tion? That will be seen in the com­ing weeks and months. As to the rest of the UNC sen­a­to­r­i­al team, the re­turn of Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit was pre­dictable. She won her spurs in the par­ty's elec­tion and as a vic­tim of Mr Pan­day, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sure to re­turn her in the cir­cum­stances.

Su­ruj Ram­bachan as leader of the UNC in the Sen­ate could al­so have been ex­pect­ed giv­en his ex­pe­ri­ence and high pro­file and his ear­ly de­c­la­ra­tion of sup­port for Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar when oth­ers were pre­var­i­cat­ing. Mervyn As­sam was not pre­dictable and one won­ders why he was re­turned as he brings noth­ing new or dif­fer­ent to the UNC. Ver­na St Rose-Greaves, while ob­vi­ous­ly hav­ing ca­pac­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence on so­cial is­sues, al­so does not have too much of a po­lit­i­cal at­trac­tion. The tem­po­rary align­ment with the PSA is un­der­stand­able with­out be­ing star­tling. What is clear­ly miss­ing is a po­lit­i­cal pol­i­cy di­rec­tion that gives some in­di­ca­tion of the par­ty's de­sire to make links and at­tract a new sup­port base. One would have al­so thought that, notwith­stand­ing the small num­bers in­volved, the UNC sen­a­to­r­i­al team would have had one ma­jor ex­pert in a rel­e­vant area to bring new in­sight to de­bates in the Up­per House. It is ear­ly days yet but not a very aus­pi­cious start.