Clevon Raphael

?Bas­deo Pan­day and Anand Ram­lo­gan owe the na­tion an apol­o­gy.

At this crit­i­cal junc­ture in T&T's po­lit­i­cal cross­roads, both gen­tle­men com­mit­ted se­ri­ous er­rors of judg­ment which could, if not prop­er­ly dealt with, de­rail any move to­wards pos­i­tive changes in the body politic. On­ly a blind man is un­able to see a def­i­nite move­ment by the peo­ple to get out of this cur­rent mess that, through no fault of the cit­i­zen­ry, the na­tion has found it­self in. Two weeks ago, Pan­day, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and more re­cent­ly for­mer Op­po­si­tion Leader, re­fused to sup­port a mo­tion by his suc­ces­sor, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to have the Low­er House de­bate the res­ig­na­tion of Ude­cott board mem­bers. It was bad enough when the gov­ern­ment mem­bers vot­ed against the mea­sure as though they were em­ployed by the state-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny and not we the elec­torate. But the in­ex­plic­a­ble and be­wil­der­ing con­duct of Pan­day and his side­kick, Kelvin Ram­nath, was al­most un­par­don­able. Pan­day's pedes­tri­an-like ex­cuse that Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not dis­cuss her in­ten­tion with him pri­or to mov­ing the mo­tion fooled no one, not even him­self. Pan­day no doubt is still smart­ing un­der the com­pre­hen­sive cut a--e his for­mer po­lit­i­cal prot�g� put on him for the lead­er­ship of the UNC and her sub­se­quent as­cen­sion to the Op­po­si­tion Leader of­fice. He ap­par­ent­ly has no in­ten­tion of ac­knowl­edg­ing his de­feat and has adopt­ed a spoilt-brat at­ti­tude in this sce­nario in which the coun­try it­self is at stake.

One won­ders if he is not spear­head­ing the re­al­i­sa­tion of his "pre­dic­tion" dur­ing the UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tion cam­paign that the par­ty would mash up six months af­ter a Per­sad-Bisses­sar vic­to­ry. By the over­whelm­ing man­date giv­en to her by the UNC elec­torate, a clear mes­sage was sent to Mr Pan­day: you have played your part but it is time to pass the ba­ton to some­one else who the peo­ple be­lieve is bet­ter poised to take the par­ty in­to gov­ern­ment. I had in­tend­ed to name Pan­day in to­day's col­umn the coun­try's pub­lic en­e­my num­ber one, but I am giv­ing him an­oth­er chance to re­deem him­self since he has in­di­cat­ed he would be sup­port­ing the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in the Prime Min­is­ter when it is de­bat­ed in the Low­er House. But I am not eas­ing him up sole­ly on his stat­ed po­si­tion on the pend­ing de­bate but al­so on how he con­tin­ues to con­duct him­self po­lit­i­cal­ly, from now on. I may even re­lent on a com­pul­so­ry apol­o­gy for let­ting down the peo­ple if he shows he has seen the mis­take he made and takes pos­i­tive steps to mend his ways, there-by per­haps al­so hav­ing an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to sal­vage his lega­cy. One man I am not pre­pared to let off the hook that eas­i­ly is my oth­er friend and some­one who I think has po­ten­tial for a pos­i­tive po­lit­i­cal fu­ture–at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan.

No one can cuss him for go­ing back "home" to the UNC, hav­ing left be­cause he was not sat­is­fied with the di­rec­tion the Pan­day-led par­ty was tak­ing. The po­lit­i­cal math­e­mat­ics clear­ly show that nei­ther the UNC nor the COP can win a gen­er­al elec­tion in a one-to-one fight with the in­cum­bent PNM, so when I heard he was go­ing to speak at that UNC meet­ing last week Mon­day, I felt it was the start of the com­ing to­geth­er of both par­ties who share a com­mon quest–to de­feat the PNM in the next gen­er­al elec­tion. But my blood ran cold when, in speak­ing to the crowd, Ram­lo­gan, in a plain­ly un­char­i­ta­ble act, was need­less­ly crit­i­cal of his for­mer leader for no log­i­cal rea­son. I am sick and tired of hear­ing peo­ple say that Dook­er­an, al­though be­yond re­proach and a nice chap, can­not make it be­cause he has no charis­ma or some mys­te­ri­ous non­sense called "oomph." My sim­ple re­sponse to these peo­ple is to look at where charis­ma and "oomph" have got­ten us to to­day. Ram­lo­gan's tirade against his for­mer leader was to­tal­ly un­war­rant­ed, com­plete­ly taste­less, and with­out mer­it. We can ex­cuse this be­hav­iour per­haps on the eu­pho­ria of the mo­ment and that Ram­lo­gan al­ready smells a UNC vic­to­ry and has placed him­self for a promi­nent po­si­tion in any such ad­min­is­tra­tion. To his eter­nal cred­it Dook­er­an, the gen­tle­man that he is, did not re­spond like­wise to Ram­lo­gan's ill-ad­vised out­burst.

What Ram­lo­gan has pos­si­bly done is un­wit­ting­ly soured, no mat­ter how minute, the ex­pressed de­sire of the peo­ple for a unit­ed COP/UNC coali­tion to go af­ter the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in the next elec­toral bat­tle. He must be aware that nei­ther the UNC nor the Cop can by them­selves win the gen­er­al elec­tion. They both need each oth­er. In­stead of al­low­ing the mo­ment to get the bet­ter of one's com­mon sense, all the ma­jor play­ers must be cir­cum­spect and al­ways keep in sight the big­ger pic­ture. I think if Anand is not mind­ed to vol­un­tar­i­ly apol­o­gise for his faux pas, Per­sad-Bisses­sar should speak to him very qui­et­ly and get him to do some dam­age con­trol. That said, my biggest con­cern at this time on the po­lit­i­cal front is the lack of ap­par­ent moves by the UNC and the COP to start the uni­fi­ca­tion process. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's vic­to­ry gave a large seg­ment of cit­i­zens the be­lief that at last there is hope on the hori­zon. But al­most two months lat­er peo­ple are won­der­ing if the mo­men­tum has lost steam.