?On­ly the naive or po­lit­i­cal­ly my­opic would se­ri­ous­ly doubt that Sun­day's in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Un­tied Na­tion­al Con­gress would have se­ri­ous re­ver­ber­a­tions on the na­tion­al land­scape.

Among the many sig­nif­i­cant mes­sages con­tained in this his­toric win of the par­ty's lead­er­ship by Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the or­der giv­en, are:

�2 A swing, no mat­ter how in­fin­i­tes­i­mal it might seem, away from eth­nic vot­ing.

�2 That the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment has to rewrite its strate­gic script for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.

�2 That the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion is in des­per­ate search for pos­i­tive lead­er­ship at the na­tion­al lev­el.

�2 That there is an in­ex­orable wind of change which can on­ly gain mo­men­tum in the wake of this al­most com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed po­lit­i­cal earth­quake.

The keen in­ter­est shown by cit­i­zens of every po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sion has been jus­ti­fi­ably height­ened by the man­ner in which vic­to­ry was achieved. And what it por­tends in terms of the next gen­er­al elec­tion must have Bal­isi­er House in much more than a spot of both­er. Up­set­ting the racial pat­tern of vot­ing which be­dev­iled the com­ing to­geth­er of the best tal­ent from the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance over the years was the elec­tion of Jack Warn­er as the par­ty's chair­man. If ever there was sig­nal that the elec­torate is mov­ing, per­haps not quick­ly enough, away from trib­al vot­ing this was it. Who would have thought, giv­en the his­tor­i­cal pat­tern in na­tion­al elec­tions, that "dem peo­ple" (a de­riso­ry term used by Afro-cen­tric Tri­nis) would have vot­ed a non-East In­di­an as chair­man of the "In­di­an par­ty," an­oth­er mis­nomer nur­tured by the dis­hon­est politi­cians in our midst. And as if to make it ab­solute­ly clear that race was fi­nal­ly get­ting the boot when we cast our votes in na­tion­al polls was the win by an­oth­er Afro-Tri­ni, Dr Daphne Phillips, as the par­ty's ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer.

Many may feel that I am be­ing pre­ma­ture on this ques­tion of eth­nic vot­ing but any dis­pas­sion­ate look at the re­sults must show that we are look­ing at an­oth­er NAR in the mak­ing, which was, in 1986, able to pull all the eth­nic groups and made us, if on­ly tem­porar­i­ly, be­lieve that we are all cit­i­zens of T&T, sink­ing or swim- ming to­geth­er. An­oth­er in­di­ca­tion of the start of a fun­da­men­tal change in our po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude was the over­whelm­ing mag­ni­tude of Kam­la's feat, with all but one of Pan­day's team fail­ing to gain a sin­gle seat on the UNC's ex­ec­u­tive. This is a very clear sig­nal that the UNC sup­port­ers, like most of us, are to­tal­ly dis­en­chant­ed with the sta­tus quo and have said they are will­ing to throw out the old and opt­ed for a change which they hope would ul­ti­mate­ly bring about the change they are han­ker­ing for.

They have com­plete­ly re­pu­di­at­ed the slash-and-burn type of pol­i­tics es­poused, un­for­tu­nate­ly, by the Pan­day slate, with the leader him­self en­gag­ing in a very dis­gust­ing and ven­omous at­tack on a woman who main­tained to the very last minute of the cam­paign that she had noth­ing but re­spect for him. There have been wide­spread crit­i­cism by UNC and non-UNC alike over the dis­grace­ful as­pects of the cam­paign, but even so, when all is said and done the UNC and Mr Pan­day must be cred­it­ed for in­tro­duc­ing true democ­ra­cy in the par­ty, through the one-man one-vote av­enue, some­thing the grand old PNM lead­er­ship dares not im­ple­ment. Al­though he has paid the price, which is how it should be in such a sce­nario, Pan­day failed to con­vince the mem­ber­ship that he was the per­son best suit­ed to take the UNC for­ward. Do you think that if such a sys­tem was op­er­at­ing in the PNM Mr Man­ning would be at the helm of his par­ty to­day? I don't know. One thing is cer­tain: the PNM un­der Man­ning as po­lit­i­cal leader would nev­er in­sti­tute such a fair and trans­par­ent method of choos­ing its lead­ers. I won­der why? So now that the dust is clear­ing, where do the UNC and Kam­la go from here? The an­swer is clear­ly in the hands of Pan­day and/or those UNC MPs who pledged their sup­port for him in the elec­tion stakes.

Kam­la must now be made Op­po­si­tion Leader, a po­si­tion which Pan­day con­tin­ues to hold, if she is to bring to fruition the hopes and ex­pec­ta­tions of so many peo­ple in and out­side the UNC. This can be achieved ei­ther by Pan­day do­ing the ho­n­ourable thing or hav­ing those MPs write the Pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ing they are now sup­port­ing Kam­la for the post. Fail­ing this they can, on their own vo­li­tion, in­form Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards they no longer sup­port Pan­day. I will be sur­prised if by to­day (this ar­ti­cle is be­ing writ­ten Mon­day morn­ing) a move in this di­rec­tion was not yet made. Dur­ing the cam­paign, I was told (con­fi­den­tial­ly) by a se­nior UNC of­fi­cial and a Pan­day sup­port­er that they ex­pect­ed Kam­la to win and if it hap­pened Mr Pan­day would be im­pressed up­on to adopt a cer­tain course of ac­tion. The lead­er­ship, I was told, was fed up of be­ing in op­po­si­tion, that the peo­ple were cry­ing out for a cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tive to the PNM, and Mr Pan­day, I was fur­ther told, was not the per­son to take the par­ty or the coun­try for­ward at this time.

�2 To be con­tin­ued