Tony Fras­er

?A tri­umph of or­di­nary peo­ple over the po­lit­i­cal back­ward­ness of a par­ty oli­garchy is one way to in­ter­pret the out­come of last Sun­day's in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. UNC sup­port­ers de­ter­mined they would take back the pow­er they had so long re­posed in the hands of Bas­deo Pan­day to do with as he pleased.

Per­haps, too, through the act of vot­ing so strong­ly against the tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of par­ty and coun­try, the UNC elec­torate has be­gun to un­der­stand that the time has come for se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal is­sues to be dis­cussed, in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal al­liances across eth­nic and ge­o­graph­ic lines, and that they have to trans­form pol­i­tics from be­ing emo­tion­al at­tach­ments to race and in­di­vid­u­als. Most im­por­tant­ly, maybe the UNC elec­torate is sig­nalling the need for a new kind of po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion that has to serve the best in­ter­ests of the coun­try. By con­trast, the con­duct, su­per­vi­sion and man­age­ment, cam­paign­ing and the gen­er­al tenor of the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions pro­vid­ed a live lab­o­ra­to­ry to test the hy­poth­e­sis laid out at the start of this se­ries, ie, that par­ty pol­i­tics in T&T has be­come dys­func­tion­al to the na­tion­al in­ter­est; there­fore the need for the so­ci­ety to be­gin to trans­form this in­cubus (the Ox­ford de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word is a very graph­ic and apt one) that has over­shad­owed the body politic of T&T.

Those who vot­ed for Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Jack Warn­er, Su­ruj Ram­bachan and the oth­ers tac­it­ly agreed with the propo­si­tion of the se­ries and de­ter­mined they had to in­ter­vene to at­tempt to re­trieve their po­lit­i­cal par­ty from hurtling head­long in­to obliv­ion. How­ev­er, the col­umn will not get car­ried away with the im­me­di­ate and must stick to the dis­ci­pline of analysing the his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the par­ty, the UNC, and to look clin­i­cal­ly at its dys­func­tion, and this notwith­stand­ing the in­ter­ven­tion that has been made. The elec­tion cam­paign ex­posed the UNC in all of its naked "weak­ness­es," to bor­row from the plat­forms. First, the elec­tion on­ly came af­ter re­peat­ed hec­tor­ing, po­lit­i­cal leader Bas­deo Pan­day hold­ing out, de­ter­mined to se­cure him­self in pow­er un­til he had to con­cede. The long and tor­tu­ous de­lay to hold the in­ter­nal elec­tions forced the Ram­Jack/Win team in­to ex­is­tence. The frontal chal­lenge to Pan­day opened the door and gave con­fi­dence to Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­ers and stirred UNC sup­port­ers in large num­bers to the po­si­tion that the brand of pol­i­tics de­vel­oped and ped­alled by Pan­day for so long had run its course.

The out­come of the 2010 elec­tions is even more sig­nif­i­cant when com­pared to the cul­ture of dom­i­na­tion that was es­tab­lished in the par­ty by Pan­day. In the two pre­ced­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions (2001 and 2005), Pan­day set the pat­tern down that he had the pow­er to scut­tle the re­sults of par­ty elec­tions when the elec­tion did not throw-up the re­sults he want­ed. In 2001, Pan­day said he did not have a slate. How­ev­er, it was clear that he did in fact have a pre­ferred set of can­di­dates, es­pe­cial­ly those for se­nior po­si­tions in the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive. When the Ramesh Ma­haraj's Team Uni­ty won 21 out of the 24 po­si­tions on the ex­ec­u­tive, in­clud­ing Ma­haraj as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, beat­ing Pan­day's choice, Car­los John, for the po­si­tion, Pan­day scut­tled the ex­ec­u­tive and took com­plete con­trol. In 2005, faced with the re­al prospect of be­ing found guilty by the courts of fraud, and his in­creas­ing un­at­trac­tive­ness to the in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal elec­torate, Pan­day suc­cumbed to in­ter­nal pres­sures and did not con­test for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the UNC, ef­fec­tive­ly con­ced­ing the po­si­tion to Win­ston Dook­er­an.

But that turned out to be no more than a strate­gic con­ces­sion. With ma­jor­i­ty sup­port on the ex­ec­u­tive of the par­ty, Pan­day did every­thing to pre­vent Dook­er­an from tak­ing charge, again uni­lat­er­al­ly and un­de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly mak­ing a mock­ery of the par­ty's elec- tion and as­sum­ing the two top po­si­tions as po­lit­i­cal leader and chair­man. What that did was to con­tribute fur­ther to the in­ef­fec­tive­ness, dys­func­tion, of the par­ty. Un­doubt­ed­ly, the open sys­tem of al­low­ing all mem­bers to elect the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive adopt­ed by the UNC is su­pe­ri­or in its de­mo­c­ra­t­ic struc­ture com­pared to that used by oth­er par­ties of al­low­ing del­e­gates on­ly to elect the ex­ec­u­tive; a sys­tem so ob­vi­ous­ly open and sub­ject to ma­nip­u­la­tion by the par­ty oli­garchy, of­ten a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual, the leader. How­ev­er, as in­di­cat­ed by the his­to­ry of the UNC elec­tions, what­ev­er plus­es for democ­ra­cy gained through bona fide mem­bers elect­ing the ex­ec­u­tive are se­vere­ly di­min­ished by ma­nip­u­la- tion, in­trigue and what was a clear ef­fort at ger­ry­man­der­ing of the vot­ing list to as­sure Pan­day and his slate of vic­to­ry.

And these are con­clu­sions that have been ar­rived at not on­ly by colum­nists and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts, but by the likes of a for­mer se­nior mem­ber/founder of the par­ty, Trevor Su­dama, who ob­served: "There needs to be an in­de­pen­dent elec­tion ma­chine. Kelvin Ram­nath, a Pan­day sup­port­er, can­not head the mem­ber­ship com­mit­tee." The re­al­i­ty there­fore has been a par­ty com­plete­ly con­trolled by a max­i­mum leader who broach­es no op­po­si­tion from with­in; he on­ly gives off the im­pres­sion of be­ing a de­mo­c­rat lead­ing a mass par­ty but is ef­fec­tive­ly at the head of an oli­garchy that sti­fles de­scent and lim­its dis­cus­sion with­in on re­al is­sues that could al­low the par­ty to de­vel­op. Su­dama and Sankers­ingh have not­ed that ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, the par­ty is dead, is­sues and wide­spread dis­cus­sion on crit­i­cal mat­ters are not en­cour­aged, in fact are for­eign to par­ty mo­bil­i­sa­tion. That view was bril­liant­ly dem-on­strat­ed dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign. In­stead of be­ing a fo­rum for dis­cus­sion of is­sues which could ad­vance par­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion, en­gage dis­cus­sion on se­ri­ous na­tion­al is­sues such as gov- er­nance, the econ­o­my and a range of oth­er mat­ters, the cam­paign was filled with per­son­al in­vec­tive, in­sults, mud­sling­ing of the worse kind and gen­er­ous help­ings of mau­vais langue, and the not too hid­den sub-text of seek­ing to in­voke trib­al­ism.

It cer­tain­ly would have been far more ben­e­fi­cial to par­ty and coun­try if Pan­day and Ma­haraj had sought to take on Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Warn­er on the themes raised by them about spread­ing the base ap­peal of the UNC, and sen­si­ble and el­e­vat­ed dis­cus­sion and de­bate over how the UNC is to ap­proach al­liances. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has the chal­lenge at hand to trans­form the pol­i­tics and the UNC.

�2 To be con­tin­ued