Tony Fras­er

Ramesh Ma­haraj is cor­rect in say­ing that the out­come of the Jan­u­ary in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) will de­ter­mine the fu­ture po­lit­i­cal prospects of the par­ty. In­deed, to take that pro­jec­tion fur­ther along the road of rep-re­sen­ta­tive pol­i­tics, the out come will al­so de­ter­mine the short-term po­lit­i­cal land­scape of T&T. It is clear that if the UNC mem­ber­ship re­turns Bas­deo Pan­day as its po­lit­i­cal leader, the par­ty will be doomed to op­po­si­tion. More­over the UNC, as now con­fig­ured, is sure to re­ceive an ever-de­clin­ing share of the num­ber of votes and seats in the lo­cal and gen­er­al elec­tions up ahead. Even be­fore Pan­day's le­gal dif­fi­cul­ties and his thrash­ing in the last gen­er­al elec­tion of 2007–both by the PNM and Dook­er­an's Con­gress of the Peo­ple, that par­ty hav­ing been able to steal 148,000 votes from un­der Pan­day's nose (and the qual­i­fi­ca­tion is made that not all the 148,000 came from the UNC base)–it was dif­fi­cult for large clus­ters of vot­ers from out­side the UNC belt to sup­port him as a na­tion­al leader. That dif­fi­cul­ty has been com­pound­ed since be­ing tar­nished by sev­er­al yet-to-be-sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly an­swered ac­tions tak­en by Pan­day when he was Prime Min­is­ter.

An­oth­er el­e­ment of Pan­day's un­at­trac­tive­ness to am­bi­tious UNC sup­port­ers, those who want to see the par­ty in gov­ern­ment, must be his track record of fail­ing to de­vel­op a coali­tion base when he was Prime Min­is­ter. He de­stroyed what was left of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion in Trinidad. He snubbed the To­ba­go arm of the par­ty when he fired the To­ba­go sen­a­tors, made it dif­fi­cult for Pam Nichol­son to con­tin­ue as min­is­ter, and ig­nored the Ho­choy Charles-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. Pan­day's ef­forts at at­tract­ing por­tions of the PNM sup­port base dur­ing his time in gov­ern­ment amount­ed to no more than woo­ing a cou­ple of op­por­tunist PNM MPs. The re­al­i­ty is since los­ing the elec­tions of 2002, Pan­day has been in a "strug­gle" to hold on to his tra­di­tion­al base. In the cir­cum­stances he has be­come even less of an at­trac­tion to non-UNC vot­ers. What then of the al­ter­na­tives for the UNC mem­ber­ship? In Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ramesh Ma­haraj the par­ty has two for­mi­da­ble politi­cians who hold out pos­si­bil­i­ties for re­ju­ve­nat­ing the par­ty and go­ing on to en­gage a coali­tion with oth­er po­lit­i­cal forces, no­tably the COP and what is left of the NAR/DAC rump in To­ba­go and the oth­er mi­nor par­ties which ex­ist.

The im­me­di­ate is­sue though is whether the con­test be­tween the two would open the door for Pan­day to slide in be­cause of the split in the an­ti-Pan­day vote, those who think that it is time for the old war horse to move on and al­low the UNC to breathe anew and re­sus­ci­tate it­self. The sec­ond is­sue is for the UNC elec­torate to de­ter­mine which one of Ma­haraj and Per­sad-Bisses­sar has the best chance to re­unite the war­ring fac­tions of the UNC con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing those who have be­come dis­en­chant­ed and are with­hold­ing their sup­port and ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion. Crit­i­cal­ly, too, the UNC mem­ber­ship has al­so to de­cide which of the two would be most at­trac­tive as the par­ty de­ter­mines to broad­en its ap­peal and even­tu­al­ly its sup­port base in or­der to trounce the PNM in a gen­er­al elec­tion. From the read­ings of the po­lit­i­cal barom­e­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar cuts the more like­able fig­ure in­side and out­side of the UNC. Al­ready, Jack Warn­er and Win­ston Dook­er­an have in­di­cat­ed they would be sup­port­ive of her and in the in­stance of Dook­er­an would be will­ing to talk about some form of ac­com­mo­da­tion.

No one has read­i­ly said the same with re­gard to a pos­si­ble Ma­haraj win. That of course does not mean that if the Tabaquite MP were to emerge as leader of the UNC, Warn­er, Dook­er­an and oth­ers would not be open to dis­cus­sions. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's record with­in the UNC has been about com­pro­mise, even when it was thought that she did not need to bend fur­ther to the wish­es of the dom­i­nant males of the UNC. Hav­ing been se­lect­ed to warm the seat of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in 1995, she moved del­i­cate­ly aside when Ramesh Ma­haraj was ready to take over the job. Her role has been to sub­serve Pan­day, nev­er once in­di­cat­ing a de­sire to cross her men­tor and leader, even when she felt "used and abused."

She has shown her­self to be open to meet­ing and dis­cussing pos­si­ble coali­tion ef­forts with Dook­er­an and the COP. In the last cou­ple weeks she has clear­ly been lis­ten­ing to what Jack Warn­er has had to say about re-unit­ing the UNC. Per­sad-Bisses­sar is there­fore well po­si­tioned to achieve in­ter­nal uni­ty and a coali­tion of the op­po­si­tion forces if she were to win the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the UNC. In the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not seen as an eth­nic hard­lin­er in the man­ner that Pan­day has cer­tain­ly come to be seen. There­fore with­in the right coali­tion frame­work, Per­sad-Bisses­sar could win the trust and give com­fort to the non-UNC base, which is need­ed if the par­ty of cen­tral and south Trinidad is to win a gen­er­al elec­tion. Un­doubt­ed­ly, though, Ramesh Ma­haraj has a greater ca­pac­i­ty, above all else, for whip­ping the UNC in­to the kind of fight­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion that could thrash the PNM in the next gen­er­al elec­tion when­ev­er it is called. Whether he would be suf­fi­cient­ly dis­posed to and be able to ini­ti­ate the kinds of po­lit­i­cal al­liances need­ed is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion.

Al­so, Ma­haraj still dis­turbs large num­bers of peo­ple who do not feel com­plete­ly com­fort­able with him in the num­ber one spot lead­ing the UNC; some­thing akin to but not ex­act­ly like Pan­day in 1986. While the then leader of the Unit­ed Labour Front (the pre­de­ces­sor to the UNC) clear­ly com­mand­ed the ma­jor­i­ty par­ty in the coali­tion, Robin­son was the one cho­sen to lead as he had re­spect and trust of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. What Ma­haraj how­ev­er does for the UNC sup­port base is to as­sure that he will not be a pushover in a na­tion­al coali­tion. It is go­ing to be the most sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sion for the UNC mem­ber­ship to make: stay with Pan­day and con­fine the UNC to be­ing the Op­po­si­tion; choose the right one of Ma­haraj and Per­sad-Bisses­sar and give the par­ty and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty an al­ter­na­tive gov­ern­ment.