Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

At a time when the UNC is en­gaged in a heat­ed in­ter­nal elec­tion, it might be con­sid­ered a heresy to speak of Dr Row­ley in any praise­wor­thy man­ner. Up­on pub­li­ca­tion of this ar­ti­cle, I will be bom­bard­ed with ac­cu­sa­tions of hav­ing turned PNM. Notwith­stand­ing, I am a firm be­liev­er that cred­it must be giv­en where it is due.

In deal­ing with broad so­ci­etal dif­fer­ences, we must be care­ful lest we overem­pha­sise or un­der­em­pha­sise the part played by dif­fer­ent re­li­gious and cul­tur­al groups.This year, Hin­dus and the Ma­ha Sab­ha cel­e­brat­ed Di­vali with the rest of the coun­try with great pomp and fes­tiv­i­ties.

De­spite the ten­u­ous eco­nom­ic con­di­tions which sur­round us, the Gov­ern­ment did not com­pro­mise the amount of fund­ing which the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty nor­mal­ly re­ceives.

It was al­so pleas­ing to see the scale and pro­pri­ety of the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion which was host­ed by the PM at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre this year. In my view, it was a gen­uine at­tempt to reach out to all com­mu­ni­ties and to make good on his elec­tion night speech. It was in­deed a love­ly func­tion.

Praise must al­so be show­ered up­on the new Speak­er of the House, Ms Bridgid An­nisette George for in­struct­ing that the prayer tra­di­tion­al­ly re­cit­ed in the Par­lia­ment, be amend­ed to in­clude the San­skrit word "Na­maste". Whilst the word "Na­maste" is re­peat­ed by many peo­ple world­wide on a sec­u­lar ba­sis, it is in fact an orig­i­nal San­skrit word in the Hin­du faith. It forms part of many Hin­du prayers (mantras) and an en­tire chap­ter in the Vedas (First Hin­du Scrip­ture) is called the "Na­makam" be­cause of its re­peat­ed us­age in same.

The Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty wel­comes the amend­ment of the 'Par­lia­men­tary prayer' as the word 'Na­maste' in­vokes a uni­ver­sal and spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion be­tween God, man and fel­low man. It is al­so con­sid­ered a greet­ing car­ry­ing a mes­sage of peace and recog­ni­tion of the di­vin­i­ty that con­nects each and every one of us.

Fur­ther­more, this de­vel­op­ment au­gurs well for na­tion-build­ing as it shows a ded­i­ca­tion to the prin­ci­ple of in­clu­sive­ness to the dif­fer­ent faiths of this coun­try.On the oth­er side of the pol­i­tics, a lot of rum­bling is tak­ing place with­in the UNC. Mrs. Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar SC still ap­pears to have the edge over her com­peti­tors.

On the ground, peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have no ad­verse com­ments to make and view her as some­one who gen­uine­ly tried but failed. This is a view which I al­so hold. How­ev­er, crit­i­cisms by her de­trac­tors are var­ied and nu­mer­ous.

Re­gard­less of how you cal­cu­late the votes and spread the loss­es across the mar­gin­al seats, the re­cent out­come of the elec­tion pe­ti­tion ap­peal, the fact re­mains that she was at the helm when the par­ty suf­fered a num­ber of de­feats.

Un­der her stew­ard­ship, in­ter­nal elec­tions were not called when they were con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. Many feel she ig­nored her loy­al sup­port­ers to keep the per­cep­tion of a "part­ner­ship" alive. Now, her in­ter­nal op­po­si­tion is say­ing she should step aside as a mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal prin­ci­ple.

Mr Roodal Mooni­lal is not a favourite on the ground. He is viewed as ar­ro­gant and lack­ing in sub­stance. His con­tri­bu­tions in the Par­lia­ment have not been im­pres­sive but he is famed for his pi­cong on the po­lit­i­cal plat­forms.

In his favour, is the fact that he is young and has been with the Par­ty since its in­cep­tion. He has served his Con­stituen­cy well. His slate is be­ing por­trayed as the right mix, al­though many have doubts about many of the as­pi­rants. He cer­tain­ly has a fight­ing chance in the in­ter­nal votes. He could car­ry some con­stituen­cies, in­clud­ing his own.

Mr Vas­ant Bharath is recog­nised as a smooth talk­ing su­per min­is­ter. Yet he does not ap­pear to be con­nect­ed with the ground like Bisses­sar or Mooni­lal.A ma­jor rea­son for this might be the fact that he was not an elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the past five years and served on­ly in a min­is­te­r­i­al/sen­a­to­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty.

The fact that Bharath is not a mem­ber of the par­lia­men­tary cham­bers might prove to be his down­fall, if not the fact that Fuad Khan does a lot of talk­ing in his cor­ner.The gen­er­al per­cep­tion is that Fuad speak­ing is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing in any cir­cum­stance.

My on­ly grouse with all of the can­di­dates is their pre­sump­tu­ous­ness that, should they win this in­ter­nal elec­tion, they will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly lead the UNC in­to the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

If you are speak­ing of strength­en­ing the par­ty and not one­self, one would have thought that a promise would be made to hold the next in­ter­nal elec­tion in three years time when it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. Af­ter all, strength­en­ing a par­ty does not on­ly take place at the base but at the top as well.

Fresh faces and new styles of lead­er­ship alone will not cut it in the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Cit­i­zens on ei­ther side of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide are al­ready on the hunt for the 'ide­al' can­di­date to lead and they will not set­tle for any­one who they must sup­port by de­fault. They are look­ing for a "Justin Trudeau" per­son­al­i­ty to win the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Good luck to all can­di­dates.