Shal­iza Has­sanali

?While Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was gear­ing up to grace Par­lia­ment as the coun­try's first fe­male Op­po­si­tion Leader, Bas­deo Pan­day could not tell what the fu­ture holds for him in pol­i­tics. "It's noth­ing un­usu­al I can think of," was Pan­day's curt re­sponse dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day. Pan­day al­so side­stepped ques­tions re­lat­ing to the like­li­hood of his con­test­ing the 2012 gen­er­al elec­tions as an in­de­pen­dent.

"My dear child, that is how many years from now? The lord him­self does not know what is go­ing hap­pen next week. Do you ex­pect me to know what will hap­pen three years from now?" In his usu­al wit­ty style, Pan­day de­scribed his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer as "go­ing through some fun­da­men­tal changes." In Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Pan­day lived up to his word and oc­cu­pied a back bench next to Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, his one-time foe.