Clevon Raphael

?What is the hold Bas­deo Pan­day has on those op­po­si­tion MPs who are so far re­fus­ing to give their full sup­port to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Op­po­si­tion Leader?

Sure­ly, what­ev­er it is must be of such mag­ni­tude that it is caus­ing these big men, who are by no means stu­pid, to en­gage in a lot of po­lit­i­cal non­sense in the coun­try's leg­is­la­ture. The more I look at this whole sce­nario, the stronger I feel there must be some thing of sig­nif­i­cance that's keep­ing those gen­tle­men from do­ing the right thing in this seem­ing­ly cut-and-dry mat­ter. Why are they risk­ing putting not on­ly their po­lit­i­cal life but their per­son­al in­tegri­ty on the line? And for what? On the sur­face it seems to be a very sim­ple mat­ter: by a re­sound­ing mar­gin the Siparia MP won the prized po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. It then log­i­cal­ly fol­lows that, based on our po­lit­i­cal tra­di­tion, Kam­la, as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the op­po­si­tion, should have been made Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, too. This cus­tom had been scrupu­lous­ly fol­lowed un­til a few years ago when, for his own per­son­al rea­sons, Bas­deo Pan­day re­neged on a promise to pave the way for Win­ston Dook­er­an to be made Op­po­si­tion Leader af­ter he be­came po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC. The whole na­tion breathed a heavy sigh of re­lief when Kam­la "brought home the pork," sound­ly trash­ing the Pan­day slate.

Her mem­o­rable vic­to­ry sig­nalled a new hope that at last a cred­i­ble par­ty–or a par­ty of par­ties–would emerge to chal­lenge the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. If the old guard had re­mained on the UNC ex­ec­u­tive, the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM would have walked home easy win­ner in the next gen­er­al elec­tion, when­ev­er it is called. So it was in the PNM's in­ter­est that Pan­day re­mained in of­fice, but not so for the large body of peo­ple who are ab­solute­ly dis­en­chant­ed with the PNM's stew­ard­ship at this time. The PNM's de­sire was open­ly gleaned when Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was re­port­ed in the me­dia as say­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives two days be­fore the Jan­u­ary 24 poll that the "Sil­ver Fox" would put a sound cut-tail on Kam­la. How­ev­er, the gods were with her and to al­most every­one's as­ton­ish­ment she pulled off a mag­nif­i­cent feat, its enor­mi­ty so over­whelm­ing that no one on the los­ing slate even dared to ask for a re­count. In­stead of do­ing the log­i­cal thing and con­ced­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader po­si­tion to Kam­la, we now have the shame­ful spec­ta­cle of hard­back men play­ing the fool in the high­est court in the land.

First they fool­ish­ly claimed that the in­ter­nal elec­tion process was some­how flawed af­ter the "dis­cov­ery" of thou­sands of mem­ber­ship forms "hid­den" some­where at the par­ty's Rien­zi Com­plex head­quar­ters. No­body be­lieved that claim. Hav­ing failed in that strat­e­gy, their next try was to con­demn the se­lec­tion by Kam­la of the par­ty's new chair­man, Jack Warn­er, as the Chief Whip in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Vas­ant Bharath, the MP for St Au­gus­tine, made the quite asi­nine charge that Kam­la was be­ing spite­ful in giv­ing Jack the as­sign­ment. An­oth­er of the MPs who chose to com­plete­ly dis­re­gard the wish­es of the peo­ple was the young, and I thought up­com­ing, politi­cian Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. With a straight face, Mooni­lal said that Kam­la had come very close to get­ting their sup­port last week but that changed af­ter she gave Jack the Chief Whip post. You be­lieve all that blast­ed fool­ish­ness by, as I said, a bunch of hard­back men who ought to know bet­ter than to play with the peo­ple's busi­ness? While I am aghast at the at­ti­tude of peo­ple like Mooni­lal, I hon­est­ly don't know what to say about Dr Tim Gopeesingh's sup­port for that in­com­pre­hen­si­ble stand by a bunch of sore losers. Dr Gopeesingh has al­ways struck me as a de­cent politi­cian, ex­cept for when he al­lowed his emo­tions to get the bet­ter of him while mak­ing that in­fa­mous eth­nic cleans­ing charge in the Par­lia­ment last year.

The renowned gy­nae­col­o­gist/ on­col­o­gist has al­ways con­duct­ed his pol­i­tics in a sober, clin­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tu­al lev­el. How can he align him­self with such a doltish act of de­fi­ance is be­yond me. He would have to ex­plain that to me when we meet at one of the Car­ni­val all-in­clu­sive fetes. If there is one man who can bring some sense to his col­leagues in this dis­grace­ful at­tempt at spit­ting in the face of their con­stituents is Dr Tim. Of course I agree that Pan­day must be recog­nised for the ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion he has made to the po­lit­i­cal and labour evo­lu­tion of T&T–but at the ap­pro­pri­ate time. Even Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning has ac­knowl­edged this. Al­though Pan­day has a piv­otal role to play if this stand-off is to end any time soon, those MPs who are sup­port­ing him al­so have an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty to close this un­for­tu­nate chap­ter in the coun­try's pol­i­tics by tak­ing a proac­tive stand. They would be do­ing them­selves and the coun­try a great in­jus­tice if they con­tin­ue to play the as... sor­ry, I mean mas, with the coun­try's democ­ra­cy.

�2 To be con­tin­ued