?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.