Gail Alexan­der

Mut­ed shouts in the back­ground em­a­nat­ing from out­side the Red House did not halt Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira's de­liv­ery of the prop­er­ty tax bill yes­ter­day. But by the time the rest of yes­ter­day's events un­fold­ed out­side the Red House where pro­test­ers were struck by ba­ton-wield­ing ri­ot po­lice–and Fi­tun pres­i­dent David Ab­du­lah was ar­rest­ed–the neg­a­tive spot­light Gov­ern­ment bore for its prop­er­ty tax had bil­lowed to mush­room cloud pro­por­tions over the rul­ing PNM. When Ab­du­lah sub­se­quent­ly de­clared that "Gov­ern­ment will pay a po­lit­i­cal price for this," it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be con­fined to the prop­er­ty tax.

Yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent may mark a turn­ing point with the gath­er­ing of forces who came (ini­tial­ly) to protest the tax: from COP and NAR mem­bers to UNC MPs and OW­TU, Fi­tun, BIG­WU and oth­er groups. It was not an ex­treme­ly large group, but a de­ter­mined one. And yes­ter­day's po­lice vi­o­lence–even more than the prop­er­ty tax now - may gal­vanise moves to make the Gov­ern­ment pay the po­lit­i­cal price. Whether as unit­ed force or not re­mains to be seen. The sit­u­a­tion oc­curred in the ab­sence of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning (re­turn­ing to­day) and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day. Pan­day's MPs–Roodal Mooni­lal, Tim Gopeesingh, Vas­ant Bharath, Hamza Rafeeq and Wade Mark–left the Par­lia­ment to join pro­test­ers. Yes­ter­day's spec­ta­cle demon­strat­ed just how "ef­fi­cient" the po­lice can be when they have to.

How­ev­er, it is guar­an­teed to plunge PNM's stocks fur­ther in a sce­nario where the rul­ing par­ty has been forced to start dis­cussing the pos­si­ble reper­cus­sions of fac­ing unit­ed Op­po­si­tion forces fur­ther ahead, if UNC lead­er­ship as­pi­rant Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar wins next month's in­ter­nal elec­tion. And that–as PNM knows–could have rip­ple ef­fects well in­to PNM's po­lit­i­cal fu­ture, ac­cord­ing to how things de­vel­op.

The new al­liance

The sit­u­a­tion is al­ready cre­at­ing waves in UNC. Pan­day, re­turn­ing Jan­u­ary 6, has on­ly a week's cam­paign­ing be­fore Nom­i­na­tion Day on Jan­u­ary 11. From re­cent ut­ter­ances, the head count of MPs in his cor­ner in­cludes Bharath, Kelvin Ram­nath, Mooni­lal, Gopeesingh and Nizam Baksh. MPs Sub­has Pan­day and Mikela Pan­day (his broth­er and daugh­ter) Rafeeq, Har­ry Par­tap and Chan­dresh Shar­ma have re­mained silent. Es­tranged MPs Jack Warn­er and Win­ston Pe­ters sup­port Per­sad-Bisses­sar. And MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj...is a con­tender al­so. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's most sig­nif­i­cant de­c­la­ra­tion from last Sat­ur­day's launch was her vow that no one would "keep her down again" –graph­ic tes­ti­mo­ny to how much serv­ing as Pan­day's sec­ond must have ran­kled. Es­pe­cial­ly af­ter she lost out on head­ing the UNC-Al­liance in 2007 when Pan­day be­stowed that ho­n­our on Warn­er.

Iron­i­cal­ly, it has come full cir­cle that Warn­er–who Per­sad-Bisses­sar blast­ed at meet­ings this year–is among her high­est pro­filed sup­port­ers. Warn­er has not prop­er­ly ex­plained why he jet­ti­soned Ma­haraj–his side­kick against Pan­day since 2008–in favour of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and whether this has to do with COP mem­bers' pref­er­ence for her as op­posed to Ma­haraj and the lat­ter's in­sis­tence that the UNC base "re­mains with UNC." (The lat­ter be­ing a po­si­tion Pan­day has main­tained.) But the UNC and COP play­ers (and T&T) are all well ac­quaint­ed with just how much pol­i­tics can make for strange bed­fel­lows. And Per­sad-Bisses­sar is savvy enough to know the pit­falls and price she may pay with one or an­oth­er. She has wit­nessed the gen­e­sis of Warn­er's pro­tege, Natasha Navas, who re­placed UNC's Su­ruj Ram­bachan in Ch­agua­nas. While Per­sad-Bisses­sar's sal­vo against her leader re­leas­es her from the per­cep­tion of be­ing Pan­day's pup­pet–con­cerns which COP je­fes ex­pressed in ear­ly uni­ty ef­forts–Warn­er's sup­port may shift her to be­ing per­ceived as his "in­stru­ment."

Hence her pro­nounce­ment at Mon­day's meet­ing, well ahead of his sup­port de­c­la­ra­tion, that she was not for "sale" and as her dis­tanc­ing when asked about in­ter­ac­tion with Warn­er. While Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be hedg­ing bets on how much Warn­er's sup­port will hurt or help, Warn­er's let­ter of sup­port for her bore pro­pri­etal nu­ances with his coun­selling and warm sen­ti­ments. In­ter­est­ing turn­around af­ter the two ap­peared at dag­gers' drawn in March. At a March 8 Women's Con­gress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar knocked the Ram­jack fac­tion on its "vague call for change" (sic) and asked: "Is it a call for change or an ir­ra­tional de­sire for pow­er that is dri­ving this so-called rift?" (sic) Warn­er re­spond­ed by threat­en­ing to "go for Kam­la" at the next ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing. Af­ter a sub­se­quent na­tion­al con­gress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar on March 22 ac­cused Warn­er and Ma­haraj of "do­ing the same thing they had done for nine years" and would "again fail." Warn­er called Per­sad-Bisses­sar "a failed politi­cian com­ing to the UNC af­ter she could not make it in the NAR" (sic). In the face of such pub­lic his­to­ry, what would have prompt­ed sup­port from Warn­er and how cred­i­ble the part­ner­ship in the name of uni­ty will be, re­mains to be seen.

Win­ning or lead­ing?

Per­sad-Bisses­sar start­ed ap­pear­ing on COP plat­forms in lat­ter 2009 when Warn­er had al­so rekin­dled re­la­tions with COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an. While her lead­er­ship bid may be viewed as the ul­ti­mate ef­fort to­wards uni­ty, COP's Ger­ald Yet­ming is look­ing be­yond UNC's elec­tion to whether a vic­to­ri­ous Per­sad-Bisses­sar will tru­ly be able to lead. Or end up like Dook­er­an when he was UNC "leader." "She's re­gained much stature by con­test­ing. My wish and ex­pec­ta­tion is that she wins and can lead and not op­er­ate as sub­or­di­nate to Pan­day. He'll al­ways be there–in the back­ground, fore­ground, un­der­ground–so if she wins she'll have to show she's leader. If not she'll be dead po­lit­i­cal­ly," Yet­ming said.

If Per­sad-Bisses­sar wins, her abil­i­ty to lead will de­pend on how much con­trol she–or her slate–has of UNC's ex­ec­u­tive and if she com­mands enough sup­port among MPs to be­come Op­po­si­tion Leader. As Dook­er­an would re­mind her. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's plat­form on Mon­day pro­mot­ed the per­cep­tion that she com­mands the sup­port of UNC's youth arm and women's vote. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's team says that at oth­er meet­ings she in­tends show­ing the depth of her sup­port via oth­er speak­ers in­clud­ing from UNC's women's arm, build­ing up to pro­duc­ing "cer­tain MPs" and big guns" as the cam­paign cli­max­es. It is how­ev­er ear­ly days yet. It re­mains to be seen how much the sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be re­in­forced when Pan­day be­gins cam­paign­ing.