Column: Is there life after the UNC election?

Where will it all end?

That is the question that many UNC supporters are asking as the internal election campaign heads down the home stretch. While there are 18 posts at stake the real interest is in two positions - political leader and chairman.

Basdeo Panday is confident of victory and so are his two challengers, Tabaquite MP and former "Ramjacker" Ramesh L. Maharaj and Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar. The chairmanship might have been an insignificant affair were it not for who is running.

It’s a contest between Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner and the current UNC vice-chairman, and St Augustine MP, Vasant Bharath.

In the leadership affair, it seems that the strategy is anybody by Persad-Bissessar. Maharaj has made it clear that he supports Panday and will let him continue as opposition leader if he wins the leadership.

And Panday has totally ignored Maharaj, training his political guns instead on his Siparia MP, whom he has described as unfit to lead by virtue of her “weakness”, which is the euphemism he has used for calling her a drunk.

His focus is on Warner as well, trying to connect both of them although each has an independent campaign.

Warner has reciprocated with frontal attacks on Panday while Persad-Bissessar began her campaign almost apologetically. However she has maintained that while Panday was a great leader and a fighter that is in the past.

And she seems to have now taken off the gloves and has been confronting Panday with the label “LOSER”.

She has been using electoral statistics to show that contrary to what Panday has been telling everybody he led the UNC to only one election victory against the PNM – in 2000 when the party won 19 seats to get a clear majority.

Panday has insisted that he won three, but the official statistics confirm Persad-Bissessar’s argument.

Reality in politics is perception and those who support Panday will go along with his story and vice versa.

The statistics and the truth have become major casualties in this epic political struggle in which Panday, for the first time ever, is facing a challenge for the leadership of “his” party.

And it is coming from a woman who sat at his side for more than a decade. Indeed many had labeled her Panday in a skirt.

At the end of the day on January 24, the real story begins to unfold.

If Panday is back and Bharath wins the chairmanship, it might seem like business as usual. But it cannot be.

Panday would have been severely wounded in a brutal campaign and the divisions in the party won’t go away. Warner and Persad-Bissessar will become instant pariahs and the Panday loyalists at Rienzi will withdraw the welcome mat for good.

That would settle the immediate matter of who is boss. But it won’t settle the real issue, which is that the UNC is stuck in the opposition and has been in a steady decline since 2000. And the leader must accept the responsibility for that.

Can Panday and his loyal MP’s, some of whom are not as loyal as Panday would expect, reshape the party and defeat the PNM?

That is the message in this campaign from those opposed to Panday.

Panday has been unable so far to show that he can win, except to say once he restores discipline in the party he will beat the PNM.

The party’s last election showing was dismal with only got 29 per cent of the popular vote as opposed to the 51 per cent in 2000.

But even more significant is that the infant Congress of the People (COP) received 148,000 - only 50,000 fewer votes than the UNC, which amounted to 22 per cent of the popular vote.

The UNC’s rejection of newcomers in the internal election – about 16,000 of them, allegedly COP members who wanted to return to the party – has already sent a signal that despite all the talk of unity the UNC is a private political club and newcomers are not going to enjoy the special privileges of those who were there when the struggle began.

Even Persad-Bissessar is singled out as an “outsider” for her former NAR allegiance although Tim Gopeesingh, who also came from NAR, is embraced lovingly, especially by the Pandays.

Persad-Bissessar and Warner cannot run off and join the COP because it would damage their credibility since both of them have campaigned as “UNC til ad dead”.

So would they try to crawl back home and say, “Sorry, chief, we made a mistake?”

Hardly likely because that is not their style and even if they did “the chief” would not be forgiving after all the mudslinging.

So there are only two alternatives: accept two plots in Panday’s political graveyard or stand up take the fight to the people. My guess is that the gravediggers can take a holiday.

This election has generated a kind of political revivalism that few thought possible. And Persad-Bissessar and Warner are the primary beneficiaries.

The citizenry appears to have come to the conclusion that they have reached the last page and it is time to close the book on the UNC, although for many, there is an understandable sentimental attachment to the party and its leader.

But that alone will not get the UNC out of opposition.

No matter how this campaign ends, it seems that the UNC is mortally wounded.

There is life after January 24. The people appear to be battle ready but unless those who oppose the Manning regime figure out a strategy to remove the current administration this battle would have all been in vain.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

This election has offered hope. Where there is hope, there will be a way forward. And the spark that this election has ignited could grow into a political inferno that has the potential to change the politics of Trinidad and Tobago forever.

Jai Parasram | 18 Dec. 2010