Last week, T&T lost two per­son­al­i­ties who had dis­tin­guished them­selves on the po­lit­i­cal bat­tle­field. Bas­deo Pan­day rose through the trade union move­ment to the ranks of leader of the Op­po­si­tion and sub­se­quent­ly prime min­is­ter. Ho­choy Charles rose through the ranks of the DAC and the NAR in To­ba­go to be­come the first chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Pan­day op­posed the PNM all his po­lit­i­cal life and his op­po­si­tion was not just about lead­ing a nu­mer­i­cal mi­nor­i­ty that did not sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in Par­lia­ment. In­stead, he chal­lenged every as­pect of the PNM’s po­lit­i­cal or­der. He was un­ortho­dox and re­fused to com­ply with that po­lit­i­cal or­der.

He re­ject­ed the pres­i­den­cy that was in­tro­duced when T&T be­came a re­pub­lic in 1976 as he re­gard­ed the of­fice as be­ing cho­sen by the Gov­ern­ment of the day. He led the boy­cott of the first sit­ting of the Elec­toral Col­lege. When he was prime min­is­ter (1995-2001), he nom­i­nat­ed an ac­tive politi­cian to the pres­i­den­cy in 1997 (ANR Robin­son). His re­jec­tion of the Er­ic Williams mod­el was fur­ther re­flect­ed in his nom­i­na­tion of de­feat­ed can­di­dates for Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1995 (Hec­tor Mc Clean) and 2001 (Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith). He sought to have sev­en de­feat­ed can­di­dates ap­point­ed sen­a­tors and min­is­ters in De­cem­ber 2000 hav­ing start­ed the ap­point­ment of de­feat­ed can­di­dates as sen­a­tors in 1976 in de­fi­ance of Er­ic Williams’ doc­trine not to make such ap­point­ments. No­tably, Kei­th Row­ley fol­lowed Pan­day’s re­jec­tion of Er­ic Williams by do­ing ex­act­ly this in 2015 and 2020.

Ho­choy Charles be­came the first chief sec­re­tary of the THA in 1996 and de­vel­oped how the new THA would func­tion af­ter its cre­ation that year. Charles was re­moved as chief sec­re­tary af­ter the NAR lost the THA elec­tion of Jan­u­ary 2001 which was brought about by the de­ci­sion of Bas­deo Pan­day to have the UNC con­test that elec­tion to split votes and re­move the NAR from pow­er in re­tal­i­a­tion for pres­i­dent Robin­son’s de­ci­sion in De­cem­ber 2000 to refuse Pan­day’s re­quest for the ap­point­ment of de­feat­ed can­di­dates as sen­a­tors and min­is­ters.

Pan­day’s strat­e­gy worked and the NAR was re­moved from pow­er in the THA and Orville Lon­don and the PNM took con­trol. Charles nev­er re­turned to any elect­ed of­fice af­ter­wards de­spite form­ing the Plat­form for Truth which con­test­ed sev­er­al THA elec­tions. There were no ma­jor fi­nanciers who would have sup­port­ed his third-par­ty chal­lenge to the PNM in To­ba­go be­cause it could have re­sult­ed in a PNM loss with a pos­si­ble split-vote out­come and would have giv­en promi­nence to his self-gov­ern­ment ar­gu­ment which is de­spised by the pow­er­ful in­ter­ests that con­trol the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, he was in­volved in dis­cus­sions for the prepa­ra­tion of au­ton­o­my leg­is­la­tion for To­ba­go. He passed away with that au­ton­o­my dream be­ing un­ful­filled. Oth­ers will have to car­ry that strug­gle that is un­want­ed in Port-of-Spain and not con­trolled by To­ba­go.

Pan­day al­so passed away with an un­ful­filled dream of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. The near­est he came to it was when he went to see prime min­is­ter Man­ning in No­vem­ber 2009 to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al for an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy to find con­sen­sus be­tween the PNM and the UNC on the is­sue.

Two months lat­er he lost the lead­er­ship of the UNC to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and was re­placed as leader of the Op­po­si­tion by her af­ter pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards made the change. The UNC has con­tin­ued to sur­vive un­der her lead­er­ship de­spite some in­ter­nal chal­lengers who would like to have her re­moved.

Pan­day was hound­ed out of of­fice by the PNM in 2001, al­so with some in­side UNC help, and was lat­er charged dur­ing the 2002 elec­tion cam­paign for not de­clar­ing as­sets to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and more charges fol­lowed him in 2005 over the Pi­ar­co Air­port con­struc­tion. Both sets of charges were even­tu­al­ly set aside. The 2002 charges were dis­missed in 2012, and the 2005 charges were dropped in 2023. The la­bel of cor­rup­tion that the PNM State and the me­dia tried to stick on him was nev­er sub­stan­ti­at­ed. The mag­is­trate who sen­tenced him to two years’ jail time in 2006 was even­tu­al­ly found to have been com­pro­mised by a cor­rupt scheme that saw him (the mag­is­trate) ac­cept­ing a pay­back for his de­posit on a prop­er­ty that was arranged in ex­change for se­cur­ing Pan­day’s con­vic­tion. This was ex­posed in a Privy Coun­cil judg­ment in June 2022. May Pan­day and Charles rest in peace.

Prof Hamid Ghany is a Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.