Ken Ali

?Win­ston Dook­er­an was a prime fig­ure in the just-end­ed po­lit­i­cal talks in­volv­ing op­po­si­tion fig­ures, ac­cord­ing to in­sid­ers.�

Dook­er­an in­sist­ed on cru­cial roles for Makan­dal Daa­ga, Ash­worth Jack and Er­rol McLeod dur­ing bar­gain­ing late last week. He may well con­sid­er the ne­go­ti­at­ed pact a sem­i­nal event in a long and me­an­der­ing po­lit­i­cal ca­reer. Dook­er­an did not walk away with the prize of prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date, but an ac­cord with var­i­ous na­tion­al in­ter­ests would un­doubt­ed­ly be an as­pect of his much-moot­ed "new pol­i­tics." The May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion rep­re­sents a new re­al­i­ty for the po­lit­i­cal leader of Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), a man who has had sev­er­al makeovers dur­ing a ca­reer of more than 30 years. The forced re­tire­ment of old hand Bas­deo Pan­day gave the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) a re­vi­tal­is­ing new life, one which was fur­ther en­hanced by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's daz­zling as­cen­dan­cy. Con­verse­ly, it has led to a bleed­ing of some COP sup­port­ers and, with it, the with­draw­al of key fi­nan­cial back­ers. As a re­sult, the COP of April 2010 is cer­tain­ly not the par­ty which snatched 148,000 votes at the No­vem­ber 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion. Dook­er­an is po­lit­i­cal­ly savvy enough to ap­pre­ci­ate that, and re­ports are that he and his as­signed ne­go­tia­tors were gen­er­al­ly amenable dur­ing late-night dis­cus­sions with UNC.

It is still not clear whether he would face the polls, but it's a good wa­ger that his name would be on the bal­lot pa­per. Af­ter all, that's the best way to sus­tain his po­lit­i­cal vi­a­bil­i­ty. Whether or not he does con­test a seat, Dook­er­an would have played a cru­cial hand for an­ti-PNM pol­i­tics that would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed by those sup­port­ers, even though it is a ma­jor climb down from his 2007 peak. The de­vel­op­ment al­so shows the re­silience of the so-called nice guy of pol­i­tics, whose ca­reer start­ed in the late 1970s un­der Pan­day's tute­lage. He was one of a hand­ful of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers to whom Pan­day grav­i­tat­ed when he first be­came Op­po­si­tion Leader. Dook­er­an, a trans­port econ­o­mist, adopt­ed the path of sev­er­al oth­er UWI types who were linked to Pan­day's po­lit­i­cal and sug­ar caus­es. He, how­ev­er, stuck with ANR Robin­son dur­ing the ma­jor bust-up with Pan­day in the late 1980s and for this was bad­ly de­monised in the sug­ar belt. His im­age surged, how­ev­er, when he be­came the stand-in prime min­is­ter and a na­tion­al good guy fol­low­ing the dread­ed so­cial in­sur­rec­tion of Ju­ly 1990.

He had re­aligned with Pan­day by mid-decade and se­cured the post of Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, which kept him a safe place from the hurly-burly of pol­i­tics but still in the pub­lic gaze. The job al­so blend­ed with Dook­er­an's per­son­al­i­ty of acad­e­mia. At the start of the past decade, the Pan­day saga again dic­tat­ed Dook­er­an's po­lit­i­cal ca­reer. Fol­low­ing elec­toral de­feats, a shell-shocked Pan­day ac­knowl­edged that he was no longer po­lit­i­cal­ly good look­ing. He spon­sored Dook­er­an for lead­er­ship of UNC, on­ly to un­der­mine him.

In turn, the new par­ty boss hur­ried­ly sought to re­make the or­gan­i­sa­tion, dis­tanc­ing him­self from work­ing class loy­al­ists and clutch­ing on­to the so-called "third force" that has al­ways been seek­ing a po­lit­i­cal home. His per­for­mance at the 2007 polls–siz­able votes, but no seats–was pre­dictable. Just like the cur­rent coali­tion arrange­ment.

The new­ly-mint­ed elec­toral pact is a re­play of the mid-1980s, when a sim­i­lar mid­dle-class body, Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion, rein­vent­ed it­self with­in the wider, more em­brac­ing Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion. Now, in his mid-60s, Dook­er­an would know his po­lit­i­cal star has large­ly pitched, but would sure­ly like to bur­nish his lega­cy by ce­ment­ing a work­able and durable pact. He still re­mains a shoo-in for Fi­nance Min­is­ter, should the so-called "uni­ty force" clinch vic­to­ry. But, in a land of young and anx­ious po­lit­i­cal as­pi­rants, the pol­i­tics of Trinidad and To­ba­go may be turn­ing a de­ci­sive cor­ner with­out much more of Win­ston Dook­er­an.

�2 Who Will Lead? se­ries con­tin­ues�on CNC3's night­ly�news­cast and�Ear­ly Morn­ing Show.