Tony Fras­er

A let­ter writer to the news­pa­per last week said the time has ar­rived (with the in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple-COP) for the par­ty to re­turn to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC); the de­sire be­ing to bring har­mo­ny to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) in­side and out­side of Gov­ern­ment. That is the point where last week's analy­sis got to on one of the is­sues which has mean­ing for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the in­ter­nal elec­tions of the COP. The elec­torate vot­ed the PP in­to pow­er on the ba­sis that the par­ties as sep­a­rate en­ti­ties rep­re­sent­ed a range of eth­nic, so­cial class, eco­nom­ic and pro­gram­mat­ic plat­forms, even geopo­lit­i­cal ar­eas of the coun­try; vot­ers there­fore felt com­fort­able in giv­ing the PP the hand­some ma­jor­i­ty se­cured in the be­lief that their vary­ing in­ter­ests would have a voice in gov­ern-ment. With a change of lead­er­ship com­ing in the COP elec­tions (Win­ston Dook­er­an, the trust­ed leader, not con­test­ing), there could be con­cern that with the three can­di­dates dif­fer­ent­ly sit­u­at­ed and hav­ing vary­ing po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives, those vis­i­ble and those hid­den, it is pos­si­ble that the bal­ance struck to the sat­is­fac­tion of the elec­torate could be changed de­pend­ing on which of the three can­di­dates, Roberts, De Li­ma and Ra­mad­har wins.

The fourth can­di­date, Nali­ni Di­al, emerged af­ter the first col­umn was writ­ten. Al­though be­ing an un­known to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, her ini­tial state­ments sug­gest she will be pur­su­ing a line sim­i­lar to De Li­ma: that is, if elect­ed she will act as a fire­wall against en­croach­ment by the UNC in­to the COP, and would seek to en­sure that the PP Gov­ern­ment keeps on track with the prin­ci­ples and pro­gram­mat­ic ap­proach as stip­u­lat­ed in the par­ty's pre-elec­tion state­ments and man­i­festo. In this re­spect, Di­al does not bring a new ide­o­log­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty to the elec­tion race. How­ev­er, be­ing a fe­male could gen­er­ate some cur­ren­cy for her can­di­da­cy. As hint­ed at last week, one strength of the pitch of Anil Roberts, this is apart from his ob­vi­ous per­son­al pop­u­lar­i­ty, is in his dis­cernible close po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship with the lead­er­ship of the UNC and with the Prime Min­is-ter. That was well demon­strat­ed last week as on his re­turn from Zurich, UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er, while be­ing "dis­ap­point­ed" with the re­fusal of can­di­date and min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har to "toe the line" es­tab­lished by the Prime Min­is­ter to sup­port him (Jack) through "thick and thin," was "heart­ened by Anil's stance," that be­ing to sup­port him to re­main in of­fice while the Fi­fa in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­ceeds.

Cou­pled with the close­ness of the po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship with the UNC, it is le­git­i­mate to con­clude that if Roberts were to cap­ture po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the COP, there is far less like­li­hood of con­flict at the lead­er­ship lev­el of the COP and the UNC. This could mean an end to the open and fre­quent con­flict be­tween and amongst min­is­ters and par­ties, at least that would be one view. The is­sue here for the COP mem­ber­ship and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to be con­cerned about if the above hap­pens is a pos­si­ble over-con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er in the hands of the po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter, which the con­sti­tu­tion en­cour­ages but the coali­tion na­ture of the rul­ing par­ty mil­i­tates against. (See Dana Sita­hal on that is­sue.) The COP elec­torate and the coun­try will have to de­cide whether it would be a fair trade-off for po­lit­i­cal peace and pos­si­bly a high­er qual­i­ty gov­er­nance achieved through a con­ver­gence at the lev­el of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Soon enough, if the con­ver­gence were to oc­cur, there will no longer be the need for the COP to ex­ist, more so that an el­e­ment of the par­ty is cut from the same cul­tur­al, eth­nic and ge­o­graph­ic (if not po­lit­i­cal) cloth as the UNC.

It should be not­ed how­ev­er that notwith­stand­ing the con­flicts with­in the PP and Gov­ern­ment and the de­sire by many to keep the dis­sent out of the me­dia, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has pub­licly stat­ed that she has no prob­lem with the ex­pres­sion of dif­fer­ing views in par­ty and gov­ern­ment. "For too long we would have had the no dog bark syn­drome where you had a to­tal dic­ta­tor­ship in lead­er­ship and peo­ple are not free to ex­press their views and what hap­pens then every­one ends of ar­gu­ing with every­body else, the peo­ple are sti­fled...that hap­pened for 10 years, it didn't work," said Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the PP. Of course on-the-record state­ments of politi­cians as a means of dam­age con­trol do not al­ways ex­press true po­si­tions. Nev­er­the­less, there aris­es an­oth­er fun­da­men­tal is­sue that is in­volved in the COP elec­tions giv­en the can­di­date choic­es fac­ing the mem­ber­ship and how mem­bers are like­ly to vote. As this col­umn has point­ed out and is well known, the COP con­sists of the French-Cre­ole and the brown skin busi­ness class in the ur­ban cen­tres, In­dos and mixed breeds, blacks per­haps for­mer­ly PNM or un­con­nect­ed po­lit­i­cal­ly, and mid­dle class In­dos who mi­grat­ed from the UNC.

There is every like­li­hood that there are seg­ments of the par­ty which will not ever be com­fort­able with a merg­er with the UNC. So if Roberts is vot­ed in­to of­fice and there is a move to con­ver­gence, they could be alien­at­ed and with­draw from the then mor­phed COP. Sim­i­lar­ly, there will be those who are in­her­ent­ly UNC who could desert the COP in even larg­er num­bers if one of Ra­mad­har or De Li­ma is elect­ed. That trans­fer­ence of loy­al­ty hap­pened at the lev­el of the lead­er­ship as many went to the UNC, af­ter Pan­day was de­feat­ed, to stake out claims for jobs at the lev­el of the Cab­i­net and on boards etc. In sum­ma­ry, the op­tions are: move to have a non-Cab­i­net mem­ber as leader to en­sure against over-con­cen­tra­tion and abuse of pow­er, in the process have that leader re­moved from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing di­vid­ed loy­al­ties; elect a leader who is like­ly to in­evitably head the par­ty in the di­rec­tion of con­ver­gence, peace and qual­i­ty gov­er­nance. The third op­tion would be for a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net to lead the COP and there­fore be on the in­side to en­sure that the prin­ci­ples and ob­jec­tives of the par­ty have a voice,Ra­mad­har but one who has shown him­self not afraid to hold a pe­cu­liar­ly COP view.