I would like to humbly sug­gest to the PM that po­lit­i­cal­ly it would be a se­ri­ous, al­most fa­tal mis­take to side­line Jack, worse to get rid of him. It is true there are many FI­FA al­le­ga­tions against him, but these are just that, which af­ford­ed her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to still side with Jack with­out any re­al po­lit­i­cal li­a­bil­i­ty, at least any with mer­it, and to show grat­i­tude at the same time. For grate­ful she must be, con­sid­er­ing the for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge Pan­day was, as his ouster and her con­se­quent in­stal­la­tion as UNC head were due in large mea­sure to Jack. And then the seem­ing­ly eter­nal Man­ning whose elim­i­na­tion at the na­tion­al polls was due, again, sig­nif­i­cant­ly to Jack be­ing at the fore­front of what seemed to be then, a wave of an­ti-PNM sen­ti­ment which could have on­ly end­ed the way it did. But with the au­dit on Pure re­strict­ing his ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er, and now with the ru­mour that he has been side­lined for Jan­u­ary 24, even as chair­man of the UNC, one won­ders if Kam­la and her ad­vis­ers are un­der­es­ti­mat­ing Jack's con­tin­u­ing hold on the pop­u­lace.

True, the FI­FA al­le­ga­tions have di­min­ished him in more ways than one, tar­nish­ing his once pow­er­ful im­age and re­duc­ing his au­ra with­in the Part­ner­ship, and cut­ting back on his ca­pac­i­ty to sus­tain his well-es­tab­lished benev­o­lence among the grass­roots, but do not give the lat­ter the in­tel­li­gence to so analyse Jack. To this sig­nif­i­cant batch of vot­ers he is still the Jack of old. And even as oth­ers of a more per­cep­tive ilk may feel that he has lost some of his moral au­thor­i­ty, still there are many who be­lieve he is the hard­est work­ing min­is­ter and that he is be­ing tar­get­ed by a ca­bal with­in the Part­ner­ship to re­duce the in­flu­ence of old which he once had, and so fur­ther their own po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions. With the talk of Pan­day mak­ing a come­back, and the Mus­lims be­ing pushed by a pop­u­lar TV host in­to feel­ing a sense of be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by a "Hin­du" gov­ern­ment and even to con­tem­plate a pos­si­ble re­turn to the tra­di­tion­al Mus­lim-African al­liance of old, with the COP seek­ing to gain lever­age with­in the Part­ner­ship through sub­tle forms of "dis­si­dence", and with pub­lic dis­af­fec­tion reach­ing al­most fever pitch be­cause of crime etc, the PM should not give Jack cause to take a side­ways glance. The PP's sur­vival for the next elec­tions de­pends on it!

Dr Er­rol Ben­jamin

Via e-mail