To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Bas­deo Pan­day has tend­ed to un­der­es­ti­mate, un­til too late, the po­ten­tial of his op­po­nents to con­found and even se­ri­ous­ly wound him. That fa­tal weak­ness ex­plains how Prime Min­is­ter Pan­day, hav­ing won a promis­ing ma­jor­i­ty in the 2000 elec­tion, suf­fered in just 12 months the re­ver­sal from which he is yet to re­cov­er. It is like­ly he may nev­er re­cov­er from the dou­ble-wham­my of the 18-18 elec­toral re­sult, and the en­su­ing ma­noeu­vres which en­abled then-Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son to ap­point Patrick Man­ning as Prime Min­is­ter.

Mr Pan­day, in the event, fell from the high­est height of na­tion­al lead­er­ship. He had, in turn, mis­read the an­tipa­thy of Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and oth­er UNC dis­si­dents, and then mis­cal­cu­lat­ed calami­tous­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Mr Man­ning and Mr Robin­son.�The sharp down­turn, there­by oc­ca­sioned in his colour­ful but fluc­tu­at­ing po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, start­ed a down­hill slide it has proved im­pos­si­ble to brake. Var­i­ous­ly charged, once con­vict­ed and even now await­ing re­tri­al, Mr Pan­day was al­so luck­less in en­joy­ing con­sis­tent op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­charge his func­tions as Cou­va North MP, and Op­po­si­tion Leader in the House.

He lost his seat for one long spell, and was sus­pend­ed for an­oth­er. Even worse than be­fore, Mr Pan­day's life since his ouster as prime min­is­ter has known no peace.�Well, no last­ing peace. By 2007, he had made peace with Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, a key mover in the Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion's down­fall around 2000-2001. Mr Ma­haraj was lat­er des­ig­nat­ed a place among the ris­ing and risen UNC stars whom Mr Pan­day called the "awe­some four­some." By 2006, that quar­tet in­clud­ed Jack Warn­er, MP-to-be of Ch­agua­nas West, and Win­ston Dook­er­an, for­mer UNC MP, fat­ed for rad­i­cal es­trange­ment from the Pan­day-dom­i­nat­ed par­ty regime.

Flash for­ward to the present, and Mr Pan­day is, once again, en­gaged in mor­tal strug­gle with for­mer close po­lit­i­cal al­lies. Mr Dook­er­an, hav­ing been long alien­at­ed to the end of start­ing his own Con­gress of the Peo­ple, Mr Warn­er and Mr Ma­haraj are now ac­tive con­fed­er­ates against Mr Pan­day. It is by no means clear that the 76-year-old Bas­deo Pan­day is still ca­pa­ble of dis­charg­ing the po­lit­i­cal sil­ver bul­lets that had fa­tal­ly tar­get­ed many of his for­mer friends-turned-foes. His cur­rent wran­gles with Ram­JackG have en­gulfed the bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas, where Su­ruj Ram­bachan, a close Pan­day al­ly, was eas­i­ly oust­ed and re­placed as May­or by a young un­known whose strongest known as­set is the sup­port of Mr Warn­er.

Cur­rent hos­til­i­ties seem set to in­cur the for­mal ex­pul­sion from the UNC of Messrs Ma­haraj and Warn­er and Ma­yaro MP Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters, and oth­ers ral­ly­ing to the Ram­JackG plat­form. Their ex­pul­sions are un­like­ly, how­ev­er, to heal the Pan­day-led UNC, and en­hance its im­age as a unit­ed and vi­able op­po­si­tion force mer­it­ing an­oth­er chance at state pow­er. This is cer­tain­ly no one-sided con­test. Mr Warn­er has shown him­self ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing se­vere body blows to his still re­doubtable op­po­nent. Vow­ing a "long hot sum­mer" for Mr Pan­day, Mr Warn­er has ini­ti­at­ed what could be a messy and ex­pen­sive slan­der law­suit against his for­mer leader.

More telling­ly, how­ev­er, he ap­pears to have turned around one of Mr Pan­day's tra­di­tion­al­ly po­tent weapons: con­demn­ing for­mer friends as thank­less "ne­makharams." It is Mr Warn­er, this time round, who is de­nounc­ing Mr Pan­day as ne­makharam. On a Cou­va North plat­form,�he de­tailed the $3 mil­lion that, in 2007 alone, he had spent on Mr Pan­day's le­gal bills and as­sort­ed fam­i­ly as­sis­tance, in­clud­ing hold­ing bail for Mrs Oma Pan­day, joint­ly charged with her hus­band.