Ken Ali

?The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has adopt­ed the out­look of in­jured in­no­cence over the palace coup that top­pled Ch­agua­nas May­or Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan. Par­ty boss Bas­deo Pan­day and loy­al side­kick Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have pre­dictably moved to link Jack Warn­er's clam­our for par­ty change with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's thrust for come­up­pance against his old po­lit­i­cal foe.

Pan­day won't be wrong, of course, ex­cept that such analy­sis of the Ch­agua­nas calami­ty is near-sight­ed and sim­plis­tic. To be sure, there would have been a close al­liance be­tween Bal­isi­er House and the Ch­agua­nas West MP's of­fice, in which the three Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment coun­cil­lors col­lab­o­rat­ed with two dis­si­dent UNC rep­re­sen­ta­tives to zap the in­cum­bent may­or.

The fact that the UNC blind­ly strolled in­to Mon­day's po­lit­i­cal slaugh­ter in­di­cates an ab­sence of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing by the par­ty or a cold dis­missal of word of a re­port­ed in­sur­rec­tion. For his part, though, Ram­bachan had in­di­cat­ed whis­pers that two mem­bers of his team were mov­ing against him, but he felt that with blan­d­ish­ments al­leged­ly be­ing prof­fered, he had lim­it­ed op­tions. But Pan­day re­mained aloof and dis­tant of the threat to seize his prized po­lit­i­cal jew­el in a man­ner, in­formed sources say, that was rem­i­nis­cent of how he re­spond­ed to the 2001 con­nivance by the Ramesh-Ralph-Su­dama par­ty mu­ti­neers.

He sure­ly would not have an­tic­i­pat­ed this week's up­ris­ing in the sup­pos­ed­ly most se­cured and for­ti­fied zone of his camp, es­pe­cial­ly with a pop­u­lar may­or and the coun­cil­lors' his­to­ry of docil­i­ty. But the re­volt is about Bas, not Su­ruj; what­ev­er you say of his pol­i­tics, few de­ny that the lat­ter had giv­en fresh gus­to and lead­er­ship to a port­fo­lio not renowned for toss­ing up dy­nam­ic, fo­cused and vi­sion­ary of­fice hold­ers.

I'm told that at least one mem­ber of the duo that out-vot­ed Ram­bachan was not grant­ed in­duce­ments. If this was so, then it fur­ther thick­ens the po­lit­i­cal in­trigue. Pan­day should take time off from his an­ti-Warn­er ha­rangue to ques­tion why would trusty po­lit­i­cal sol­diers break ranks with the par­ty. He should al­so se­ri­ous­ly ques­tion whether he is los­ing touch with the po­lit­i­cal pulse at ground lev­el.

Is this a vote against his con­tro­ver­sial par­ty lead­er­ship? Is it a con­fi­dence boost­er to the Ram­jack's cru­sade for UNC "change?" Or, would it lead to a clos­ing of ranks among the UNC flock, in the process shut­ting out the de­monised Ram­jack­ers? Do they all now have an over­whelm­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lem? Just who wins in this de­ba­cle? Is it Man­ning, whose qui­et machi­na­tions were in­te­gral to the Ch­agua­nas po­lit­i­cal storm? Is the po­lit­i­cal­ly as­tute PNM chief reap­ing un­ex­pect­ed div­i­dend from his dis­put­ed post­pone­ment of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll?

Pan­day sac­ri­ficed the moral high ground the day he sur­mised that "pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own," which fol­lowed his own lur­ing of two PNM par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to but­tress his wob­bly ad­min­is­tra­tion. In Warn­er, he has iden­ti­fied the req­ui­site po­lit­i­cal foe, and, like a wound­ed li­on, he would now be typ­i­cal­ly raw and ram­pant. He would al­so ex­pect­ed­ly reach for his well-worn ruse of vic­tim­hood. In the process, he may con­tin­ue to take his gaze off burn­ing na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing the crime epi­dem­ic. But Jack is no po­lit­i­cal pushover and that's not just be­cause of his fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal. He is a re­doubtable in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-honed leader and sur­vivor, with strate­gic skills and tac­ti­cal abil­i­ty, which would prop­er­ly serve him in go­ing toe-to-toe with his es­tranged leader.

The po­lit­i­cal bat­tle has been joined,�with an even messier pub­lic sword­fight loom­ing. It seems to now have passed the stage of am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion, and, any­way, the UNC has nev­er had a dis­pute res­o­lu­tion ap­pa­ra­tus. But is the Pan­day-Warn­er du­el worth it? Are they mere­ly fight­ing for the re­mains of a par­ty�large­ly un­at­trac­tive to the east-west cor­ri­dor, youths, women and young pro­fes­sion­als? Has the line in the sand been drawn so sharply that a UNC ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion would not rec­on­cile the war­ring wrestlers?

The an­swers are blow­ing in the wind, but�an­a­lysts may sur­mise that a post-Pan­day era is qui­et­ly tak­ing shape and that it may in­clude rest­less el­e­ments of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, who are dis­il­lu­sioned by Win­ston Dook­er­an's pa­tient, aca­d­e­m­ic ap­proach. In all of this, a rad­i­cal po­lit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion is re­quired among op­po­nents of the en­trenched PNM. Au­thor Leo Tol­stoy's pro­found in­sights may be rel­e­vant, that "every­one thinks of chang­ing the world, but no one thinks of chang­ing him­self."