Shal­iza Has­sanali

As a trade union­ist fight­ing for the rights of poor cane work­ers, Bas­deo Pan­day in 1994, one year short of be­ing sworn in as the coun­try's first In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter, spoke out against the drug lords, who he said were work­ing in col­lu­sion with the "par­a­sitic oli­garchy" and the "cor­rupt PNM gov­ern­ment." Lead­ing up to the 1995 gen­er­al elec­tion, Pan­day con­tin­ued his par­a­sitic oli­garchy cam­paign, say­ing that they con­tin­ued to con­trol the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and to hold po­lit­i­cal sway over the gov­ern­ment. He said the oli­garchy was not nec­es­sar­i­ly French Cre­oles, but Africans and East In­di­ans who held eco­nom­ic pow­er.

"Some­times, they think they are white, and be­cause of that they hold sway in the coun­try," the for­mer UNC leader added. In­deed, the black man­age­r­i­al class on­ly had of­fice, but the par­a­sitic oli­garchy had the pow­er, he claimed. "What I am try­ing to say is that every five years the black mass­es win the elec­tions, but the oli­garchy wins the gov­ern­ment." Af­ter his de­feat in the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tions last month, Pan­day evad­ed re­porters out­side Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court, when he reap­peared be­fore a mag­is­trate charged with fail­ing to de­clare his Lon­don bank ac­count to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Fac­ing bribery charges

Pan­day faces three charges of fail­ing to de­clare his Natwest Lon­don bank ac­count to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999.

This mat­ter has been ad­journed. Al­so last month, the bribery case brought against Pan­day, his wife Oma and busi­ness­men Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Car­los John, was put on hold, pend­ing the hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of his ap­peal on a ju­di­cial re­view claim that the pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate was bi­ased. The State al­leged that the Pan­days had re­ceived $250,000 on De­cem­ber 30, 1998, from John and Gal­barans­ingh, in ex­change for giv­ing North­ern Con­struc­tion a con­tract for a Pi­ar­co Air­port de­vel­op­ment project. Pan­day is al­so the first for­mer prime min­is­ter to be jailed for sev­er­al days at the Max­i­mum State Prison in Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca, in June, 2005, af­ter he was re­fused bail on a charge of cor­rupt­ly re­ceiv­ing a �25,000 re­ward from Car­los John and Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh.