Mar­tin George

Now, it would cer­tain­ly be a cop out to say pre­ma­ture­ly that this is not work­ing and to pick up your jha­ji bun­dle and walk off in­to the sun­set and out of the house of the ris­ing sun. But the ques­tion is al­so this: How long do you stay tak­ing the heat with no re­lief, and how many times do you have to "burn" in or­der to learn? This ba­si­cal­ly is the gist of what the COP chair­man said in his tele­vi­sion in­ter­view this week, in the af­ter­math of Mar­lene-Gate.

Burn No­tice

In what was a clas­sic case of a "Burn No­tice", COP Leader Prakash Ra­mad­har bared his fangs and showed the Part­ner­ship that kit­ty has claws. He made what ap­peared to be a grand­stand­ing, throw­ing down of the gaunt­let to the ma­jor­i­ty UNC part­ner ba­si­cal­ly say­ing, "I ain't tak­ing no more horn. Don't talk to me un­less Mar­lene gone."

This was af­ter hav­ing failed to bring about the mean­ing­ful change he sought in his ear­li­er pas­sion­ate ap­peals for greater open­ness and trans­paren­cy in the di­a­logue, me­chan­ics and work­ing mech­a­nisms of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

His present call ap­pears to have not found favour or res­o­nance with his own, ever vo­cal and out­spo­ken COP Min­is­ter Anil Roberts, nor has it found favour with the up­per ech­e­lons of the ma­jor­i­ty coali­tion par­ty the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Py­ro­ma­nia

At the end of the day it is not an is­sue which can be kept qui­et or un­der wraps, as all over the blogs and the so­cial net­work­ing me­dia there are peo­ple who have for months been voic­ing con­cerns and dis­sat­is­fac­tion over the way things are work­ing or not work­ing for or against COP in the Part­ner­ship.

COP sup­port­ers have been for some time now voic­ing their feel­ings of hurt and ne­glect, and they now are adding to this list the is­sue of dis­re­spect. Of course, when one looks back at the whole im­broglio you have to ask your­self, was it re­al­ly worth it? Is this one in­di­vid­ual re­al­ly worth all this fuss and both­er?

Of course, from the COP's point of view it goes way be­yond the in­di­vid­ual and they see this as the prover­bial last straw in a long list of burn­ing is­sues. But from the UNC's point of view it be­comes more dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend why they would re­peat­ed­ly go about set­ting lit­tle fires to their body politic and then hav­ing to rush to put them out? I have pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed this as PPP (Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Py­ro­ma­nia), and it seems to be alive and well as ever.

Rub­bing salt in wounds

What has been the re­al ben­e­fit and tri­umph of this clan­des­tine move and covert op­er­a­tion ex­cept to re-open the raw bleed­ing wounds of COP hurt, and dis­af­fec­tion and vig­or­ous­ly rub salt in them.

Is there some sig­nal be­ing sent to the COP by this or was it just care­less, thought­less po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of the con­se­quences? It es­capes one en­tire­ly when one does the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, as to what re­al­ly is the ben­e­fit to the UNC of this lat­est ma­noeu­vre. Is there some hid­den tal­ent or po­ten­tial that this in­di­vid­ual has that she can bring as mas­sive po­lit­i­cal stocks to the ta­ble, or is she a game win­ner or deal mak­er to seal some sort of vic­to­ry for the UNC? One strug­gles to find a log­i­cal, long term ex­pla­na­tion for these lat­est shenani­gans, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the rather in­salu­bri­ous cli­mate and feel­ings of ill-will which they have gen­er­at­ed among the part­ners in Gov­ern­ment.

A voice cry­ing in the wilder­ness

The COP has let its voice be heard. Will it be a voice cry­ing in the wilder­ness or will it be a shout that echoes around the na­tion? Will it be a ral­ly­ing cry for the oth­er mem­bers of the Part­ner­ship to say that even though pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own, among our­selves we must be de­cent?

Or will it be each man for him­self and God for all? That is the moral and eth­i­cal dilem­ma fac­ing the COP at this time. It is all too pre­dictable that there would be at­tempts at quick and easy ap­pease­ments and blan­d­ish­ments be­ing of­fered to the COP to make this go away qui­et­ly, prob­a­bly giv­ing some one or the oth­er a state board ap­point­ment in the hope that this would smooth things over or keep them at bay.

How would the COP play it out from here? Would Prakash be made to put his tail be­tween his legs and go sit in a cor­ner like Lit­tle Jack Horner, or would he dis­play the tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude to re­al­ly press his case and take the moral high ground if he does not get the mean­ing­ful change he seeks.

Ei­ther way, it is go­ing to be a defin­ing time for the Con­gress of the Peo­ple as the na­tion waits to see if Prakash can be a Man in the House of the Ris­ing Sun-one who de­mands and gets re­spect when he goes there, or whether they would just play a cat and mouse game with him know­ing that he is sim­ply the mouse that roared.