?Gail Alexan­der

?Luck­i­ly for PNM House leader Colm Im­bert the rules of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives do not al­low MPs to eat in the Par­lia­ment cham­ber dur­ing pro­ceed­ings. And Im­bert may al­so be thank­ful that UNC MP Jack Warn­er got a new job as UNC chief whip yes­ter­day. If not, Im­bert may have been forced by UNC MPs to eat his words when Im­bert–dur­ing last month's prop­er­ty tax de­bate–had told UNC's Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that her col­league Bas­deo Pan­day would give her a "lick­ing" in the UNC's Jan­u­ary 24 elec­tion. It is now his­to­ry that Im­bert's "pre­dic­tion" was wrong. But yes­ter­day's dra­ma in the House when Per­sad-Bisses­sar got crack­ing–ap­point­ing Warn­er as chief whip–dis­tract­ed suf­fi­cient­ly from Im­bert enough to save him from any eat­ing (of words or oth­er­wise). The many ironies of the his­toric Jan­u­ary 24 rout­ing saw Pan­day out­foxed by (some of) his own, but in­tent on bat­tling (still) in his re­main­ing two years as Cou­va North MP.

Set­ting the scene for shift­ing ground ahead in lo­cal pol­i­tics. With a new in­ex­pe­ri­enced ex­ec­u­tive large­ly com­pris­ing peo­ple who do not sit in Par­lia­ment (as the pre­vi­ous team did), sim­mer­ing in­ter­nal is­sues and the rul­ing PNM gird­ing for of­fen­sive, the task be­fore Per­sad-Bisses­sar's UNC is large and the time in which to do it is small. Pre­sent­ing a sub­stan­tial chal­lenge. The PNM is al­ready mov­ing in the cur­rent gap, un­der­tak­ing walk­a­bouts in Op­po­si­tion seats–in­clud­ing Pan­day's on Mon­day–to take ad­van­tage of an Op­posi- tion strug­gling to re­group af­ter a bruis­ing elec­tion and blood­let­ting ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue. In­deed, the fall­out on the UNC side from the sur­prise of Warn­er's ap­point­ment yes­ter­day was so ob­vi­ous that Man­ning was com­fort­able enough to have been as gen­er­ous with his com­ments (mid-de­bate) about Pan­day and Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Jeop­ar­dis­ing her sup­port?

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ap­point­ment of Warn­er has swift­ly pro­claimed her au­thor­i­ty, fur­ther putting the squeeze on Pan­day psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly–and lit­er­al­ly–where House seat­ing was con­cerned. Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Warn­er, a worka­holic, might waste no time in crack­ing the whip to whip the UNC in­to shape as an at­trac­tive po­lit­i­cal in­vest­ment. How­ev­er, he may have to jug­gle du­ties with this year's World Cup work and–with lim­it­ed Par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence–may re­quire a crash course in pro­ce­dures. His ap­point­ment may, as well, have reper­cus­sions on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's bid to be­come Op­po­si­tion Leader where some MPs are con­cerned. To­day's sit­u­a­tion is a far cry from 2006 when she was made Op­po­si­tion Leader–over then UNC leader Win­ston Dook­er­an–with Pan­day's sanc­tion and Warn­er's as­sis­tance. Per­sad-Bisses­sar now re­quires the sup­port of sev­en of the UNC's 15 MPs for the post.

The UNC's new ex­ec­u­tive on Wednes­day had pro­posed writ­ing MPs rec­om­mend­ing that they sup­port her for Op­po­si­tion Leader, an ex­ec­u­tive spokesman said Thurs­day. How­ev­er Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­cused her­self from dis­cus­sions, sub­se­quent­ly asked to be giv­en a chance to speak to her fel­low MPs be­fore the let­ters were sent, they added. She was giv­en un­til yes­ter­day's House ses­sion to do this, the spokesman added. Sup­port­ing her are MPs Warn­er, Win­ston Pe­ters, Har­ry Par­tap and Nizam Baksh. Hold­ing the bal­ance of pow­er are MPs who (like Par­tap) signed a let­ter of sup­port for Pan­day be­fore the cam­paign: Chan­dresh Shar-ma, Tim Gopeesingh, Roodal Mooni­lal and the ill Hamza Ra-feeq.The leader of at least one re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion con­firmed yes­ter­day to TG that sim­i­lar groups have rec­om­mend­ed to some MPs to sup­port Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the post.

MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who had vowed to al­low Pan­day to re­main as Op­po­si­tion Leader if Ma­haraj won, sub­se­quent­ly said he would work with the new ex­ec­u­tive. But Mooni­lal, Bharath and oth­er MPs yes­ter­day com­ment­ed ad­verse­ly on the way Warn­er was ap­point­ed and the ill Rafeeq was re­placed

And Pan­day is not ex­pect­ed to be de­sert­ed by his broth­er Sub­has, daugh­ter Mikela or MP Kelvin Ram­nath. While Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ex­ec­u­tive met Wednes­day, no par­lia­men­tary cau­cus was held, save for an in­for­mal meet­ing on Mon­day at Pan­day's Op­po­si­tion of­fice in­volv­ing three oth­er MPs where prepa­ra­tions for yes­ter­day's House were made. MPs sup­port­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar were ab­sent. How­ev­er, mat­ters de­cid­ed up­on at that meet­ing were void­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ap­point­ment of Warn­er. If cleared as Op­po­si­tion Leader, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's at­ten­tion may next fall on the UNC's Sen­ate team which could al­so see changes, ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said Thurs­day.

New deputy leader Su­ruj Ram­bachan is tipped for the Sen­ate where Pan­day's promise to place him last year re­mains un­ful­filled to date, af­ter Ram­bachan was oust­ed as Ch­agua­nas may­or. How­ev­er there are ques­tion marks over the con­tin­ued sta­tus of Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, who had crit­i­cised Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit–now deputy leader–dur­ing the cam­paign and Pan­day stal­wart MF Ra­haman, who al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ou­dit. Sim­i­lar­ly, there are ques­tions over who will make the "cut" (or not) in the new ad­min­is­tra­tion's choic­es for ex­pect­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls. The new dis­pen­sa­tion's ties with the COP–if this is deep­ened –is ex­pect­ed to man­i­fest there.

Foes or friends

The 21-mem­ber Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­ec­u­tive (eight women aboard) in­cludes four for­mer Ram­jack of­fi­cials–Warn­er, Sylvester Ramquar, Don Sylvester, and Ru­pert Grif­fith. The sea­soned play­ers are Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the ex-Ram­jack­ers, deputy lead­ers Mooni­lal and Su­ruj Ram­bachan, vice chair­man Fuad Khan, ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Daphne Phillips, and women's af­fairs of­fi­cer Jen­nifer Ker­na­han. The dis­tance which Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Warn­er at­tempt­ed to por­tray be­tween them dur­ing the cam­paign fell away in vic­to­ry with Warn­er as con­spic­u­ous­ly at Per­sad-Bisses­sar's side as he had been at the side of Ch­agua­nas May­or Natasha Navas, who had had Warn­er's back­ing in oust­ing Ram­bachan as may­or. At that time Warn­er had tele-graphed that Pan­day was "next." In the six months it took for that pre­dic­tion to be ful­filled, the sit­u­a­tion has now seen Ram­bachan be­come part of the new UNC ex­ec­u­tive chaired by Warn­er.

Ram­bachan, who left for Mi­a­mi (on busi­ness he said) right af­ter the UNC elec­tion, missed sit­ting along­side Warn­er for the new ex­ec­u­tive's first meet­ing. Asked how he would work with the man whose pro­tege oust­ed him in Ch­agua­nas–and con­sid­er­ing his re­cent de­c­la­ra­tion that he'd nev­er trust Warn­er–Ram­bachan replied: "Peo­ple will have to earn my trust. I'll demon­strate my trust­wor­thi­ness and they will have to show theirs and I'll op­er­ate as any pro­fes­sion­al would. If we all have a clear idea and cause and fo­cus on co­a­lesc­ing and agree on com­mon val­ue there should be no prob­lem." Pol­i­cy of­fi­cer Col­in Par­tap, one of those who clashed–lit­er­al­ly–with the Ram­jack group dur­ing the March 23, 2009, melee at Rien­zi Com­plex dur­ing a Con­gress, will al­so have to work along­side Warn­er. Par­tap, son of MP Par­tap, had coined the term "Ram­jack."

'UN­COP'–new en­ti­ty

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's el­e­va­tion to leader was achieved on the ba­sis–apart from oth­er fac­tors–that she rep­re­sent­ed the hope for uni­fi­ca­tion of UNC and COP forces and the change from Op­po­si­tion to Gov­ern­ment some an­tic­i­pate could spring from that. Mar­ket­ed on that ba­sis there­fore, not on­ly will she be held to her po­lit­i­cal promis­es, but par­tic­u­lar­ly on uni­ty ex­pec­ta­tions. While COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an has made pos­i­tive nois­es about talks with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, on Thurs­day he opt­ed to "let the peo­ple de­cide" (sic) when asked about her head­ing a unit­ed op­po­si­tion. With Per­sad-Bisses­sar's po­lit­i­cal star now in as­cen­den­cy, how­ev­er, Dook­er­an (and COP's) stocks may be lim­it­ed. Robin Mon­tano is among sev­er­al COP foun­da­tion mem­bers who warn the sit­u­a­tion could de­stroy both. One COP of­fi­cial added, "The 100,000 UNC mem­bers who left and helped form COP did so be­cause of dis­en­chant­ment with Pan­day.

"They had sup­port­ed UNC mem­bers like Manohar Ram­saran, Gan­ga Singh, Gillian Lucky. "Now Pan­day is gone and they've found them­selves un­com­fort­able in a COP head­ed by peo­ple who were nev­er in UNC– Robert May­ers, Wendy Lee Yuen, Lin­coln Dou­glas, Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith more seen as ONR/ NAR types–so these mem­bers may flow back to the UNC. "The on­ly COP per­son who has bond­ed with them is Prakash Ramd­har." The COP will hope to stem that flow be­fore it be­comes weak­ened, mit­i­gat­ing against ne­go­ti­a­tion for equal­i­ty in a pow­er-shar­ing arrange­ment. In­deed, UNC MP Nizam Baksh, who sup­ports Per­sad-Bisses­sar, says the UNC should "open up mem­ber­ship to COP to see what flows in, strength­en­ing UNC's base" rather than ne­go­ti­ate with the COP. Baksh added, "If you lis­ten to COP peo­ple, they al­so have is­sues in that par­ty so we should wel­come those who want to re­turn to UNC's new leader."

COP's Ger­ald Yet­ming be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be "al­lowed" to lead a unit­ed op­po­si­tion. So high are hopes that COP foun­da­tion mem­bers Gary Grif­fith and John Humphrey have dis­cussed a UNC/COP uni­ty sym­bol done by Humphrey–who de­signed the UNC's Ris­ing Sun sym­bol. Grif­fith said, "The par­ties may not need to dis­band or con­sume one an­oth­er to work to­geth­er. They need to keep their iden­ti­ty or else there might be reper­cus­sions for one or an­oth­er." Humphrey added, "Win­ston says COP is the nat­ur­al home of every­one and if the UNC is the home of some, a com­bi­na­tion of them both should be home for all T&T. "There­fore the sym­bol I de­signed is a com­bi­na­tion of this–the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of the Peo­ple (UN­COP).

"The sym­bol was a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from the UNC's Ris­ing Sun to a UN­COP's sun which is ful­ly risen on high. This is now the time for what the late Lloyd Best rec­om­mend­ed–a par­ty of par­ties un­der one um­brel­la in a pre-elec­tion coali­tion and lat­er a coali­tion gov­ern­ment." Humphrey said, "This will cap­ture the spir­it of 1986 and is bet­ter. "If we'd had done this then, NAR would have still been in of­fice." Cer­tain se­nior foun­da­tion COP of­fi­cials (for­mer min­is­ters) hes­i­tat­ed Thurs­day when asked about Per­sad-Bisses­sar's abil­i­ty to lead a gov­ern­ment. "If she has a strong, ex­pe­ri­enced team–and there are good re­sources in the COP and UNC–then it can work," was the view.