Guest commentary: The road Ahead for new UNC in T&T

It took a month but finally Kamla Persad Bissessar is fully in charge of the UNC, both inside and outside of Parliament.

She now controls the activities of the House of Representatives and the Upper House as Leader of the Opposition; this means she will now be responsible for the appointment of Senators and is now the official UNC representative for all official duties including consultations with the President and Prime Minister.

It was an uphill struggle to unseat Basdeo Panday who remained Leader of the Opposition because despite his defeat, a few Opposition MP’s refused to accept that Kamla beat him 10-1 in the January 24 election to become the Leader of the UNC.

Panday was allowed to keep the post of Opposition Leader until Thursday because the constitution states that the Opposition Leader is the person who has the support of the majority of Opposition MP’s.

While more than 13,000 members rejected Panday, a few of his loyal MP’s propped him up until Thursday. By doing so, these MP’s ignored the will of the majority and acted in a selfish manner seeking their individual interests and those of their ousted leader.

Panday had always insisted that if the people reject him, he will leave. So far, he has not kept that promise and it took a month for the President to fire him and he is still not accepting that his time is up.

That is the struggle that the new Leadership has to deal with today and in the months ahead.

Panday continues to insist that the UNC will be dead in six months. He refuses to accept that he is no longer in charge; this is the man who has always preached about a united opposition, about Party discipline; this is the man who is now is going against his own words.

The new Leadership will now have to balance the role that it will offer to Panday with the demands of the membership.

You will recall that the campaign had a few very clear points:

• Panday’s Leadership had failed
• He was unable to take the Party back to Government
• A new Leadership will rebuild the Party and position it to win the win the next General Election.

The result was quite clear; Panday was no longer acceptable.

The membership wants to be sure that it is not business as usual with Panday, that he is no longer running the show.

Even today, we still have the spectacle of seven UNC MP’s refusing to accept the democratic will of the people. Some of them like the MP for St Augustine Vasant Bharath will only support Kamla on his terms; in other words, this is about him, not the Party, not the people.

That is the greatest danger to the UNC today and it will be a tremendous hurdle for the new team to cross in rebuilding a credible Party that can deliver on its promise of winning Government.

The new leadership now needs to re-build and re-brand the Party. They must now ensure that in preparing the Party for the next General Elections, they reverse the trend of worrying about self-preservation rather than social change.

Prior to January 24 election, it was all about those in Leadership seeking to preserve their own status quo because they believed and acted as though only the anointed ones can move us forward, can criticize us, can speak for us and determine what was right and what was wrong.

The disconnect between the Leadership and the members/supporters was becoming more and more evident; the Party was becoming a place where only a privileged few were being welcomed and accommodated.

The new Leadership has promised to dismantle that culture of privilege and entitlement, and the only way it can achieve its goals is to keep its promise to the people.

The mandate of the new UNC must be to prepare the Party for success at the next General Election.

Their mission will be to restore citizen’s basic rights, ensure that they have the basic infrastructures in place - lights, water, health care, education, roads etc - they must ensure that law and order is restored and enforced, where the rights of workers are jealously guarded, where the culture of democracy is never challenged and where the promotion of the rule of law is our way of life.


This commentary by CAPIL BISSON represents his own views and not necessarily those of JYOTI. It was broadcast on Saturday, 27 Feb. 2010 in Toronto on The Caribbean Connection on Chin Radio 100.7FM, hosted by Jai Ojah Maharaj