Mar­tin George

?Once again, the good old Bas has stirred up the pot and left them all in a stew, while he is off to Mer­rie ole Lon­don town to en­joy the hol­i­days. He is prob­a­bly grin­ning and rub­bing his hands with glee, like a mis­chie­vous school­boy, and chortling to him­self with amuse­ment as, once again, he has man­aged to cre­ate a case of Pan­day­mo­ni­um, leav­ing them all swirling in his wake. It's all smoke and mir­rors with the wily Sil­ver Fox, trap doors, es­cape hatch­es, boo­by traps, dead ends and end­less mazes. Since the an­nounce­ment of in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tions, he has set the ball a-rolling, and it has been the goo­gly, the chi­na­man and the off-break he has been hit­ting them with ever since. He has them wor­ried over who con­trols the vot­ing list, who con­trols the mem­ber­ship lists, who con­trols the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tion forms, and whether there will re­al­ly be free and fair elec­tions, if there are any elec­tions at all, on Jan­u­ary 24th, 2010.

With all the con­fu­sion and bac­cha­nal be­ing stirred up, one can eas­i­ly see one fac­tion or an­oth­er fil­ing High court ac­tion be­fore Jan­u­ary 24th, 2010, al­leg­ing one thing or an­oth­er, with the re­sult that the in­ter­nal elec­tions will be stayed, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion and out­come of those pro­ceed­ings. If not, that then Pan­day will keep bait­ing and promis­ing each of his op­po­nents with plum po­si­tions and pride of place at his side, if they con­cede to him. If they refuse, he will cas­ti­gate and lam­baste them shame­less­ly and mer­ci­less­ly, from pil­lar to post. Re­mem­ber his rant on tele­vi­sion af­ter los­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tion. The ven­om and bile of Pan­day knows no end. He will use the car­rot and stick on both Ramesh and Kam­la, be­cause as far as he is con­cerned, he must re­main in pow­er; must re­main in the spot­light. It is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to him, and he will, be­cause he holds all the trump cards.

At this point, Pan­day still con­trols the post and po­si­tion of Op­po­si­tion Leader, so at the end of the day, all this fight­ing and joust­ing and pos­tur­ing by Ramesh and Kam­la may all be in vain. Pan­day, al­so at this point, has had the pledged sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of the UNC Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. Once this con­tin­ues to be the case, you can have an ab­surd sce­nario, where even if Ramesh or Kam­la were to win the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader, they would still not have ef­fec­tive pow­er, be­cause the place where you re­al­ly have a voice to ef­fect mean­ing­ful change on a na­tion­al scale is in the Par­lia­ment. So you could end up in a sit­u­a­tion where you have won a pyrrhic vic­to­ry which, Pan­day will en­sure, re­mains hol­low and emp­ty. Bas has tied them up in this fran­tic chase for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader, and he is wait­ing at the fin­ish line just to pull the rug out from un­der them.

He al­ready has Ramesh and Kam­la squared off against each oth­er, with Ramesh open­ing the bat­ting with some sting­ing cov­er dri­ves and some six­es over the ropes to Kam­la's bowl­ing. Ramesh is danc­ing down the pitch and charg­ing in­to her, be­cause he per­ceives her as an eas­i­er tar­get than the old Bas. Ramesh has al­so recog­nised the co­nun­drum in­to which both he and Kam­la have end­ed up, be­cause they both will ef­fec­tive­ly split the an­ti-Pan­day vote and al­low Pan­day to squeak through the mid­dle with the ma­jor­i­ty of votes. The on­ly thing which can save the two of them is a strat­e­gy where­by they dupe the Sil­ver Fox in­to think­ing that they are re­al­ly go­ing to keep fight­ing down to the end like this, and at the very last mo­ment, when it's too late for Pan­day to re­group his forces, they co­a­lesce and merge their plat­forms as a joint slate, with Kam­la lead­ing and Ramesh as her deputy and hope the mo­men­tum of that new twist will cre­ate a groundswell of sup­port which will not on­ly knock Pan­day off guard, but will al­so then pro­pel them on to vic­to­ry.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, there is no plan in all of this for Kam­la to be­come Prime Min­is­ter, as she will even­tu­al­ly be side­lined and dis­card­ed, once she has served her pur­pose, so all the women's lib talk and fe­male rights rhetoric is just fod­der for the mill and good for pub­lic con­sump­tion at the mo­ment. Kam­la re­mains just a pawn in some­one's game all the time, de­spite her most stri­dent and pas­sion­ate protes­ta­tions to the con­trary. This move of join­ing forces at the last minute will al­so have the ef­fect of up­set­ting the ap­ple cart in Par­lia­ment, in that once this hap­pens, the UNC par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who may have pre­vi­ous­ly pledged al­le­giance to Pan­day will now have to con­sid­er whether they want to con­tin­ue to op­pose the Ramesh, Kam­la, Jack tri­umvi­rate. Make no mis­take, that is what it will be; that is what it re­al­ly is, and Jack re­mains the ul­ti­mate power­bro­ker and the in­domitable mover and shak­er be­hind all ma­jor changes tak­ing place with­in the UNC.

You see, this is an at­tempt to out­fox the Sil­ver Fox; to beat him at his own game; to lull him in­to a false sense of se­cu­ri­ty and then pull the floor out from un­der him, while he thinks he is pulling the rug out from un­der them. It is a clas­sic case of shift­ing the goal­posts. He is gloat­ing and glee­ful that Ramesh and Kam­la ap­pear to be fight­ing each oth­er, be­cause that as­sures him of vic­to­ry, but if they join to­geth­er at the last minute (that is not some­thing he catered for), that will catch him off guard. It is prob­a­bly the on­ly way that they may re­move him and thwart his plans and am­bi­tion to die with his boots on, and with the chains of of­fice still around his neck. Will it work; will it suc­ceed? This will de­pend on Mr Pan­day, when he re­turns from his Lon­don so­journ and on whether he can un­seat their plans by cre­at­ing enough con­fu­sion and shift­ing the fo­cus back to him­self and mak­ing it, once again, a case of Pan­day­mo­ni­um.