To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The dis­clo­sure that thou­sands of al­leged ap­pli­ca­tion forms for mem­ber­ship in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) were dumped in a store­room at Rien­zi Com­plex rais­es ques­tions not so much about the out­come of Sun­day's elec­tions of the par­ty but rather about the or­gan­i­sa­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tive ef­fi­cien­cy of the op­po­si­tion par­ty. How could these ap­pli­ca­tion forms have es­caped the at­ten­tion of the gen­er­al sec­re­tary and the gen­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tion of the UNC?�Who did the gen­er­al sec­re­tary re­port to over the pe­ri­od? Are the ap­pli­ca­tion forms gen­uine, com­ing from peo­ple want­i­ng to join the par­ty? And why were they on­ly found two days af­ter the UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tions, which re­sult­ed in the rout­ing of the par­ty's founder, Bas­deo Pan­day and his regime, who have long had a stran­gle­hold on the par­ty. And there are many more ques­tions to be asked. Can­did­ly, it seems like an at­tempt by the out­go­ing team to dis­cred­it in some fash­ion or the oth­er the vic­to­ry of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Jack Warn­er and the oth­ers who put a re­sound­ing beat­ing on them.

It is go­ing over like the last gasp­ing breath of a dy­ing dy­nasty in de­nial about its ir­rel­e­vance and hop­ing to some­how save face, per­haps still even har­bour­ing the thought of un­set­tling the new po­lit­i­cal leader and her team about to take up of­fice. Dur­ing the cam­paign when the 16,000 new ap­pli­cants were pre­vent­ed from be­com­ing mem­bers, the team prepar­ing the list was con­fi­dent that it had the job in hand, that the new list was prop­er­ly sani­tised and that the elec­tions would turn out to be a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the will of the mem­ber­ship of the par­ty; now this seem­ing smoke­screen to not so clev­er­ly cast doubt on the process. The UNC is not an overnight par­ty. Even be­fore it came in­to ex­is­tence 20 years ago, the ma­jor play­ers were part of the Unit­ed Labour Front, the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion and Club 88.

There­fore, the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive skill re­quired to es­tab­lish and mo­bilise a po­lit­i­cal par­ty could have been log­i­cal­ly ex­pect­ed to have resided amongst the mem­bers. Yet this de­ba­cle which, if it has le­git­i­ma­cy, is com­plete­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the an­cient regime. And what is to be done about what is al­leged to have hap­pened? One op­tion for new po­lit­i­cal leader Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is to call in the Fraud Squad and put the en­tire mat­ter in the hands of the law of­fi­cers and "let the chips fall where they may." In do­ing so, the new po­lit­i­cal leader will be free to pro­ceed with the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the par­ty and its ma­chin­ery. On a pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion, the in­ter­nal polls of 2005, when there were se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of vote rig­ging, that was glossed over and one of the com­plainants, Jack Warn­er, closed ranks and got back in­to the po­lit­i­cal bed with Mr Pan­day.

That kind of white­wash should not be al­lowed to hap­pen again. Mean­while, this news­pa­per re­peats the rec­om­men­da­tion it made to Mr Pan­day ear­li­er this week: leave town while you still have a few clothes of dig­ni­ty draped around you. Any ef­fort to dis­cred­it and dele­git­imise the in­com­ing po­lit­i­cal leader and her ad­min­is­tra­tion will not work and will on­ly serve to en­rage the UNC's mem­bers.�If the polls of Sun­day re­vealed any­thing, it is that the mass of the UNC mem­ber­ship is des­per­ate­ly call­ing for change. As al­so pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised, the UNC MPs must lis­ten to the voic­es of their con­stituents. By vot­ing Mr Pan­day and all the mem­bers of his slate out of of­fice, ex­cept for Roodal Mooni­lal, the UNC mem­ber­ship is send­ing a mes­sage di­rect­ly to Mr Pan­day and in­di­rect­ly to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. That mes­sage is that the UNC no longer sup­ports Bas­deo Pan­day as the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. As a true pa­tri­ot and de­mo­c­rat, Mr Pan­day must be guid­ed by the voice of his par­ty.