To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?No one who has fol­lowed the ca­reer of Bas­deo Pan­day should be sur­prised about his ac­tions fol­low­ing his hu­mil­i­at­ing de­feat at the in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), elec­tions which de­cid­ed on the lead­er­ship and fu­ture di­rec­tion of the par­ty. On three pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions when the vote in in­ter­nal polls did not go in favour of Mr Pan­day's slate of can­di­dates, he smashed the elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive to re­gain to­tal con­trol of the par­ty. In the in­stance when he con­ced­ed lead­er­ship to Win­ston Dook­er­an, on his tack back he not on­ly re­trieved the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the par­ty but grabbed hold of the chair­man­ship too, tak­ing com­plete con­trol of the par­ty. Al­so, when Mr Pan­day aligned his po­lit­i­cal forces with the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion, he found it nec­es­sary to break up the par­ty as the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty won by the NAR left him with­out the pow­er to con­trol the or­gan­i­sa­tion and there­fore the gov­ern­ment.

No one should be un­der any il­lu­sion that what Mr Pan­day is an­gling to do this time around amounts to the same thing: dis­cred­it the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ex­ec­u­tive, even claim­ing there was fraud in the elec­tions process, and ini­ti­ate con­flict among the mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive and be­tween that body and the UNC Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, all with the in­ten­tion to even­tu­al­ly bring about a col­lapse of the new­ly and so over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive. It is al­so not sur­pris­ing that Mr Pan­day has se­lect­ed Jack Warn­er as his ini­tial tar­get for de­ri­sion, be­liev­ing that he could use the Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent as a kind of light­ning rod for his dis­like. This type of trib­al tar­get­ing is typ­i­cal of Mr Pan­day, us­ing the di­vide-and-rule tac­tic to hold his place of pow­er with­in the In­do-Trinida­di­an po­lit­i­cal base.

But so wed­ded is he to such pol­i­tics that he can­not even dis­cern that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of those who vot­ed for Mr Warn­er in the in­ter­nal polls against Vas­ant Bharath must have been In­do-Trinida­di­an. Al­so, no one should be sur­prised that while Mr Pan­day said he would lis­ten to the voice of the peo­ple and do their bid­ding, he is not on­ly ig­nor­ing the vote of the elec­torate, but is in­sti­gat­ing those MPs with al­le­giance to him to do the same. What Mr Pan­day has said dur­ing his long and tu­mul­tuous ca­reer and what he has done on so many oc­ca­sions have been sep­a­rate and apart, words not match­ing deeds. As to the ac­tions and po­si­tions adopt­ed so far by the MPs, those who have been said to have signed on to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar's team must be com­mend­ed. They clear­ly have un­der­stood the man­date they have been giv­en by their con­stituents by the vote in the in­ter­nal polls and are now le­git­i­mate­ly giv­ing their sup­port to the new­ly elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader.

Those who have not done so thus far are hid­ing be­hind every pos­si­ble ex­cuse for a rea­son. In­stead of en­gag­ing in sophistry, in­stead of blind­ly fol­low­ing the foot­steps of a leader who has been re­ject­ed by the elec­torate, if they are re­luc­tant to take heed of the elec­tion re­sults, they should go out in­to their com­mu­ni­ties and gen­uine­ly sound out opin­ion there. Find out who their con­stituents would have them sup­port for the po­si­tion Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Sure­ly, this would be the most re­li­able weath­er vane for them to take guid­ance from in­stead of the wish­es of a fad­ing po­lit­i­cal don whose best years of ser­vice to the peo­ple are long be­hind him. The time is right for the UNC to or­gan­ise it­self be­hind one leader who has the po­ten­tial to take the par­ty for­ward to make the kinds of al­liances re­quired and to ac­quit it­self to the task of tak­ing on the PNM. The time for fool­ish pol­i­tick­ing is gone.