Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves peo­ple will have to wait and see whether Mick­ela Pan­day will seek to go it alone in pol­i­tics or seek some ac­com­mo­da­tion.

For­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas mean­while be­lieves that if she wish­es to re­sume her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer it’s clear­ly up to her, while a UNC deputy leader prefers for her to grieve be­fore fo­cus­ing on such mat­ters.

They all com­ment­ed yes­ter­day fol­low­ing pub­lic praise for how Mick­ela han­dled the fu­ner­al of her fa­ther, for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, and seem­ing­ly re­newed en­thu­si­asm sur­round­ing her po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

Pan­day died on Jan­u­ary 1 in Flori­da. A state fu­ner­al was held on Tues­day at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts be­fore he was cre­mat­ed at the Shore of Peace. All were done un­der Hin­du rites. Yes­ter­day, the rit­u­al of col­lect­ing the ash­es was ex­pect­ed.

Mick­ela Pan­day launched the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front in 2019 but did not con­test the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions or last year’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

On her han­dling of the fu­ner­al, Ra­goonath said, “Al­though in grief, Mick­ela was able to main­tain her bal­ance, that it was not on­ly the fam­i­ly griev­ing but the wider so­ci­ety. Her em­brace of mem­bers of the pub­lic dur­ing the pe­ri­od the body lay in state was well re­ceived, and in keep­ing with her fa­ther’s ac­tions in em­brac­ing all, notwith­stand­ing so­cial sta­tus or oth­er di­vi­sions.

“Her eu­lo­gy, as well as state­ments and ac­tiv­i­ties since the death through the fu­ner­al, un­der­scored that she re­mained com­mit­ted to pur­su­ing Pan­day’s dream for the so­ci­ety.

“This brings us to her po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions. The stage has been set for her to jump head­long in­to the po­lit­i­cal are­na. What we will have to wait and see is whether she would seek to go it alone or seek some ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“From a time per­spec­tive, with elec­tion 18 months away, she’ll have to max­imise what­ev­er sym­pa­thy sup­port she can get now in or­der to build a base for her par­ty.”

He added, “If she doesn’t do so now, it would be very dif­fi­cult to build a base lat­er, and thus she’d have to en­ter in­to some sort of ac­com­mo­da­tion with an­oth­er par­ty. What we saw dur­ing the last week was that there were no over­tures to em­brace the UNC or its lead­er­ship. But there’s still time for that if the Pan­days and the UNC lead­er­ship want to at­tempt to bury the hatch­et, though strong po­si­tions on ei­ther side may make that pos­si­bil­i­ty a dif­fi­cult chal­lenge.”

Mean­while, Du­mas said from the tele­vi­sion ex­cerpts he had seen of Mick­ela Pan­day greet­ing peo­ple at the Red House, she con­duct­ed her­self very prop­er­ly.

“Though there’d be peo­ple who’d say she was cam­paign­ing but there are peo­ple who’d want to put you down any­way. Whether she wish­es to re­sume her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer is clear­ly up to her. But we have to wait. This is a pe­ri­od of mourn­ing, I don’t think we should be con­cen­trat­ing too much on the pol­i­tics and so quick­ly for­get­ting the man and the re­spect he’s due, re­li­gious and oth­er­wise,” said Du­mas.

There was no re­sponse from UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on how Mick­ela Pan­day han­dled the fu­ner­al, her po­lit­i­cal fu­ture and if the UNC will seek to bring her in be­fore the 2025 polls.

But UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said, “The Hin­du post-fu­ner­al rit­u­als aren’t over and the pe­ri­od of mourn­ing con­tin­ues. So I pre­fer not to com­ment on those mat­ters un­til af­ter the Bhan­dara 13 days af­ter the fu­ner­al. We ought not to dis­turb the tran­quil­li­ty of the pro­ceed­ings and the safe jour­ney of the soul.”

UNC par­lia­men­tar­i­ans al­so de­clined to say if or when they would file ques­tions in Par­lia­ment for the Gov­ern­ment to state how much it cost to send Pan­day for his med­ical treat­ment, repa­tri­a­tion of his body and the state fu­ner­al. PNM of­fi­cials did not re­spond to queries about how Mick­ela Pan­day han­dled the fu­ner­al and her po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

Pan­day’s ash­es to be of­fered to mov­ing wa­ter

For­mer UNC and Fyz­abad MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma, a pun­dit who at­tend­ed the wake at the late Bas­deo Pan­day’s home, said a de­ceased’s ash­es are ex­pect­ed to be of­fered to mov­ing wa­ter with prayers to con­tin­ue its jour­ney and con­nect with the di­vine course. As­sist­ing the soul’s trav­el is the tra­di­tion on the tenth day af­ter the fu­ner­al, of the shav­ing of the heads of male rel­a­tives.

On the 12th day is the Bhan­dara with prayers to help the soul to re­alise its jour­ney, which takes a year to Mok­sha (lib­er­a­tion from death and re­birth and uni­ty with the cre­ator).

Shar­ma added that the fam­i­ly re­turns to nor­mal rou­tine af­ter 12 days but for the next 11 months while the soul con­tin­ues to Mok­sha, ma­jor con­struc­tion or new projects are usu­al­ly not rec­om­mend­ed. On the 11th month, fi­nal prayers are held, fol­low­ing which rel­a­tives re­turn to nor­mal life.