?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."