?They were once...no, twice...bit­ter en­e­mies. Now Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj feels his friend­ship with founder of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Bas­deo Pan­day is again in bloom. They're the clos­est they have ever been in years be­cause of the re­cent dif­fi­cul­ties the par­ty has been fac­ing, Ma­haraj in­di­cat­ed. De­scrib­ing Pan­day as a fight­er for the un­der­dog and op­pressed, Ma­haraj is­sued a warn­ing last Thurs­day, the very day Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sworn in as Op­po­si­tion Leader, that the Sil­ver Fox's po­lit­i­cal ca­reer was far from over. "His day has not end­ed yet," de­clared Ma­haraj. De­feat­ed in the UNC's Jan­u­ary 24 in­ter­nal elec­tions by his main ri­val Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Pan­day was dealt an­oth­er blow a month lat­er when eight of his MPs, in an his­toric move, threw their sup­port be­hind the Siparia MP as Op­po­si­tion Leader. "I don't think the role of Pan­day is fin­ished in the coun­try. I think he will con­tin­ue to fight, prob­a­bly at a dif­fer­ent lev­el. His fight will con­tin­ue at the grass­roots be­cause his heart is for and with the peo­ple," Ma­haraj said. Ma­haraj al­so in­sists Pan­day will not ride out in­to the sun­set as many think. "I have no doubt that he has many oth­er bat­tles to fight," Ma­haraj re­marked.

I don't feel sor­ry

Asked whether he felt sor­ry for Pan­day who held one of the high­est of­fices in the land from 1995 to 2001–as Prime Min­is­ter of T&T–Ma­haraj re­marked:

"Oh no! Pan­day would not want me to feel sor­ry for him." Ad­mit­ting he had locked horns with Pan­day, first in 2001 when he was dis­missed as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter for stand­ing up against cor­rup­tion with­in the UNC, Ma­haraj feels all of that is now his­to­ry. Many of the diehard sup­port­ers ac­cused Ma­haraj of de­stroy­ing the UNC which has been plagued with in-fight­ing and ri­val­ry. Pan­day wel­comed Ma­haraj back in­to the UNC pri­or to the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion, al­low­ing him to con­test the Tabaquite seat, much to the dis­ap­proval of sup­port­ers. How­ev­er, with­in two years of serv­ing as MP, they fell out again as Ma­haraj joined forces with Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er in the cru­sade for change, urg­ing the po­lit­i­cal leader to step aside mak­ing way for new blood.

More to unite us

When Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar threw her hat in the con­test for the of­fice of par­ty leader, Ma­haraj even­tu­al­ly rekin­dled the friend­ship with Pan­day. "Al­though we had our dif­fer­ences you have to recog­nise the con­tri­bu­tions he has made to the pol­i­tics of the coun­try and his fight against in­jus­tices."

Ma­haraj said when he locked horns with Pan­day he felt hurt be­cause they had shared a close re­la­tion­ship for years. "There is more to unite Pan­day and my­self than to di­vide us." The Tabaquite MP con­fess­es that his re­la­tion­ship with Pan­day has been some­what strained.

?'War not end­ed'

?Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says it is up to Pan­day to throw in the po­lit­i­cal tow­el. "I can­not say whether his ca­reer is over. It is up to Pan­day to de­cide whether he wants to end now or not." Hav­ing fol­lowed the "Sil­ver Fox's" po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, Ra­goonath said Pan­day will no doubt face an up­hill bat­tle to re­store cred­i­bil­i­ty and to take back con­trol of the par­ty. "First and fore­most, he is a politi­cian. He is ex­pect­ed to do every­thing and any­thing, ei­ther to win pow­er or stay in pow­er. In that con­text, that is what you have to ex­pect from him." Ra­goonath said while the mem­ber­ship of the par­ty has spo­ken, Pan­day can try ei­ther to up­stage the par­ty or work with the mem­ber­ship to win the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Even though Pan­day has been oust­ed, Ra­goonath con­tends that does not mean he will ac­cept that de­ci­sion. "He may very well chal­lenge or try to up­stage it."

On Pan­day's switch to the back bench­es in Par­lia­ment Fri­day, Ra­goonath replied: "We have now seen the at­tempt to take pow­er from a man who has been at the fore­front of strug­gle for how­ev­er long. In oth­er places, this could dri­ve peo­ple to men­tal break­down or it might even cause peo­ple to com­mit sui­cide. "I am not say­ing this is go­ing to hap­pen to Pan­day." Ra­goonath com­ments that in the face of ad­ver­si­ty, Pan­day has sur­vived it all. All in all, Ra­goonath feels while Pan­day has lost this bat­tle it's cer­tain­ly not the end of the war for him.