To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?It's en­tire­ly like­ly that if the new UNC po­lit­i­cal leader were male, the deft moves made dur­ing the last few days in that par­ty would have been hailed as de­ci­sive ex­pres­sions of lead­er­ship and a com­mit­ment to pos­i­tive change. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the du­ly and over­whelm­ing­ly-elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader of that par­ty, is now, in­stead, be­ing ac­cused of "hound­ing" Bas­deo Pan­day out of the of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader and of be­ing "dis­cour­te­ous," "high-hand­ed" and "al­most vin­dic­tive�" in ap­point­ing new­ly-elect­ed UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er to the post of Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip. These char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions are, re­gret­tably, like­ly to be on­ly the start of the kind of male-dom­i­nat­ed re-eval­u­a­tion of the woman who over­turned the re­al­i­ty of the Op­po­si­tion par­ty's pol­i­tics. In win­ning the elec­tion by a land­slide, draw­ing al­most ten times as many votes as the in­cum­bent, and draw­ing along with her in­to of­fice her en­tire slate of can­di­dates, Per­sad-Bisses­sar clear­ly tapped in­to the dis­con­tent with­in the par­ty's rank and file and the state of the Op­po­si­tion par­ty's busi­ness as it was con­sti­tut­ed.

The first act of any sen­si­ble politi­cian brought in­to of­fice un­der such cir­cum­stances would be to in­di­cate, by word and by deed, that busi­ness would not be done, in any form or fash­ion, as it had been done be­fore. A man do­ing this would, no doubt, have been salut­ed as po­lit­i­cal­ly-savvy, un­der­stand­ing the man­date giv­en to him by the elec­torate re­spon­si­ble for his vic­to­ry. The new­ly-elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader has, de­spite the sharp clar­i­ty of her ac­tions, been re­mark­ably gen­er­ous in her han­dling of a sit­u­a­tion which is es­sen­tial­ly with­out prece­dent in the 20-year life of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. There has nev­er be­fore been a sit­u­a­tion in which the sup­port for Bas­deo Pan­day's lead­er­ship has been any­thing less than ab­solute and the loy­al­ty to him less than iron­clad. There has cer­tain­ly nev­er been a sit­u­a­tion in which a de­ci­sive ma­jor­i­ty of the UNC's vot­ing body has so clear­ly sig­nalled to him their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his per­for­mance as their leader.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's first moves in the of­fice of UNC po­lit­i­cal leader demon­strate an un­der­stand­ing that she was not brought to of­fice by Bas­deo Pan­day or even by the elect­ed MPs of the UNC, but by a telling ma­jor­i­ty of the vot­ing mem­ber­ship of the par­ty. The first im­per­a­tive of the new po­lit­i­cal leader must be to re­spect the clear­ly-in­di­cat­ed de­sire for change ex­pressed by that elec­torate in the man­age­ment of their par­ty and she has done pre­cise­ly that, with clear, ap­pro­pri­ate moves that sig­nal her in­ten­tion to change the stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures that have pre­vailed for the UNC since its re­turn to op­po­si­tion in 2001. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready an­nounced her in­ten­tion to con­sti­tute a prop­er shad­ow Cab­i­net in the UNC, sig­nalling a long over­due com­mit­ment by the Op­po­si­tion par­ty to ful­fil its role in Par­lia­ment as a more ef­fec­tive coun­ter­foil to the gov­ern­ment in pow­er and to ar­tic­u­late a more use­ful and rel­e­vant role for it­self in de­bates on na­tion­al pol­i­cy and gov­er­nance.

That the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC must do so in the face of dif­fi­dence from her col­leagues is un­for­tu­nate, but not in­sur­mount­able. It is al­so un­der­stand­able that Bas­deo Pan­day is hav­ing some dif­fi­cul­ty ad­just­ing to the sur­pris­ing change in his po­lit­i­cal val­u­a­tion that the Jan­u­ary 24 in­ter­nal elec­tion has brought home to him. It is al­so clear that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ful­ly in­tends to pro­vide the de­ci­sive and po­ten­tial­ly un­wel­come lead­er­ship that the UNC has been lack­ing since its re­turn to op­po­si­tion. In the in­evitable con­flict be­tween those per­spec­tives, it is left to Bas­deo Pan­day to find an un­tapped well­spring of po­lit­i­cal gen­eros­i­ty in the twi­light of his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, and pro­vide the kind of guid­ance and sup­port that the par­ty he has led for 20 years needs now to tran­si­tion to the next phase of its de­vel­op­ment.