East­er is a sto­ry of be­tray­al, de­nial, for­give­ness, per­son­al suf­fer­ing, and the promise of bet­ter times. Not un­like what we see and hear in our po­lit­i­cal land­scape.

Was Ju­das just mo­ti­vat­ed by greed for 30 pieces of sil­ver? Some schol­ars sug­gest Ju­das was dis­il­lu­sioned and want­ed a more im­me­di­ate, po­lit­i­cal change for his Mes­si­ah to over­throw the Ro­man Em­pire. An­oth­er per­spec­tive is that Ju­das was ful­fill­ing a di­vine plan, nec­es­sary for the cru­ci­fix­ion to oc­cur. John 13:27 sug­gests that Sa­tan pos­sessed Ju­das, who may not have been in con­trol.

Af­ter the ar­rest of Je­sus, even Pe­ter de­nied he knew Je­sus, his fear over­rid­ing his loy­al­ty. When the go­ing gets tough some aban­don ship and take the safe way out.

Now on to our po­lit­i­cal Ju­das­es.

When the em­i­nent Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, mount­ed a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) plat­form, he was de­scribed as a Ju­das. Some al­leged he was a clos­et PNM all the time, his job be­ing to in­sti­gate in­ter­nal dis­cord with­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) par­ty. Oth­ers al­leged it was sour grapes since he was not of­fered a safe seat or sen­a­to­r­i­al post.

Let­ter writer Yaseen Ahmed re­minds us that in Sep­tem­ber 2019, Lal­la “heav­i­ly lam­bast­ed our then-prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, rub­bish­ing his calls for a ‘new so­ci­ety’, de­scrib­ing him as ‘the man who com­mit­ted the great­est fraud on the peo­ple in this coun­try in our 57-year his­to­ry.”

Ahmed won­dered how Lal­la could now sit next to Dr Row­ley chant­i­ng a new mantra, ‘If the UNC wins, we all lose.’ Ahmed stat­ed that Lal­la made sev­er­al known good points on the UNC’s short­com­ings but seemed to tar­get the Op­po­si­tion Leader for her un­usu­al con­trol over the par­ty; her mis­man­age­ment of the par­ty’s fi­nances, caus­ing them not to have per­ma­nent head­quar­ters; her four-day week­ends; her in­abil­i­ty to get to of­fice be­fore lunch; her fail­ing health; and her ques­tion­able judge­ments.

A week ago, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, a for­mer PNM min­is­ter of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and RC priest, switched sides and en­dorsed Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Swarats­ingh said there comes a time when “we have to say ‘enough is enough’ - move aside and give some se­ri­ous peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do what they have to do.” He be­moaned the fact that T&T had lost its place as the fi­nan­cial pow­er­house of the Caribbean and peo­ple are suf­fer­ing more, and blamed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Swarats­ingh praised the UNC/PP gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in buy­ing US$325 mil­lion in CAF (al­so know as the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca), which en­ti­tled T&T to US$1.2 bil­lion in fund­ing for de­vel­op­ment. In 2010, some UNC front­lin­ers who chas­tised him have now wel­comed him and some PNM mem­bers now ques­tion the trust­wor­thi­ness of a ‘priest who turned in his frock’.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, this Ju­das rhetoric was al­so heard in 2001 when for­mer PM Bas­deo Pan­day de­scribed the gang of three dis­si­dents who op­posed his at­tempt to foist Car­los John on the mem­ber­ship as the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC. When the in­ter­nal elec­tion was called, Pan­day’s “se­lect­ed” one was beat­en by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, but then all hell broke loose and the na­tion had to re­turn to the polls. The an­i­mos­i­ty met­ed out to these ‘Neemakarams and Ju­das­es’ by par­ty faith­ful was in­deed harsh.

PNM mem­bers Hec­tor Mc­Clean, then lat­er Ru­pert Grif­fith and Dr Vin­cent Lasse, al­so felt the wrath of the PNM’s Women’s League when they switched al­le­giance.

When a for­mer AG un­der the PNM, Sel­wyn Richard­son, made his de­but on a Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion plat­form it caused great ex­cite­ment, as he was known as a man who got things done, but he was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by his old par­ty mem­bers. Pow­er strug­gle, the “par­a­sitic oli­garchy” and eth­nic ten­sions lat­er im­plod­ed his par­ty. Lat­er, Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters jumped across to the PNM to con­test a seat, de­spite a pre­vi­ous le­gal chal­lenge from the same PNM con­cern­ing his dual cit­i­zen­ship, when he was vot­ed in as a UNC MP.

So, two no­table men mak­ing about-turns in their ide­ol­o­gy. An un­de­cid­ed vot­er may be more per­plexed try­ing to un­der­stand this pol­i­tics with its own moral­i­ty.

For­mer PNM min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte has writ­ten that he held Dr Row­ley ac­count­able for the lack of ex­e­cu­tion of es­sen­tial trans­for­ma­tion­al ini­tia­tives and that Mr Stu­art Young, who was chair­man of the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pose Com­mit­tee, which is crit­i­cal for prob­ing projects and en­sur­ing nec­es­sary ap­provals are on track, has to an­swer why over the last decade he was un­able to im­ple­ment the projects he now speaks of.

While good lead­er­ship is cru­cial, the pop­u­la­tion must ul­ti­mate­ly de­cide which team—whether the “pick­up side” or the “repack­aged side”—is bet­ter equipped and ca­pa­ble of ex­e­cut­ing its plans ef­fec­tive­ly.