Tony Fras­er

Does the chal­lenge by Bas­deo Pan­day through his Gen­er­a­tion Next to the UNC's po­lit­i­cal leader's hold on pow­er, and the ob­vi­ous in­ten­tion by those in the hi­er­ar­chy of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to rid them­selves of Jack Warn­er, now that he is per­ceived as a li­a­bil­i­ty to par­ty and gov­ern­ment, have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to once again turn the UNC in on it­self?

In­ter­nal elec­tions of the UNC and their af­ter­math have al­ways been ex­cit­ing po­lit­i­cal hap­pen­ings. How­ev­er, they have of­ten re­sult­ed in tur­moil in the par­ty. In­deed, on a few oc­ca­sions af­ter elec­tions there was se­ri­ous frac­tur­ing of the par­ty, even the even­tu­al loss of Gov­ern­ment by the UNC.

The im­plo­sions go back to the out­come of the first in­ter­nal elec­tions when elect­ed chair­man Ram­per­sad Paras­ram and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Kelvin Ram­nath had the ex­ec­u­tive scut­tled from un­der their feet. The con­flict in­volv­ing the Ramesh Ma­haraj team left se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal blood on the floor, the UNC be­ing even­tu­al­ly re­moved from pow­er when Prime Min­is­ter Pan­day was forced to call fresh elec­tions af­ter on­ly one year in of­fice and the fear of a palace (par­lia­men­tary) coup by Ma­haraj and Man­ning.

Then there was Win­ston Dook­er­an in­stalled as po­lit­i­cal leader with the bless­ings of Bas, but soon be­com­ing a ca­su­al­ty of his spon­sor. Even­tu­al­ly Bas re­trieved his po­lit­i­cal leader po­si­tion. How­ev­er, as he was to mourn, the cre­ation of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple by Dook­er­an split the vote and de­feat­ed the UNC.

Con­cen­trat­ed po­lit­i­cal gueril­la war­fare by Warn­er and Ma­haraj forced Pan­day in­to a fight against Per­sad-Bisses­sar. It was an his­toric event as Pan­day was crushed by some­one he con­sid­ered a po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte in­ca­pable of ever tak­ing him on. The old war­rior was de­posit­ed in the po­lit­i­cal ceme­tery in an un­marked grave nev­er to be heard of again; or at least so it was thought.

Per­haps not with the same fan­fare and dy­namism of Lazarus, Bas­deo Pan­day has re­turned with his Gen­er­a­tion Next to at­tempt to ef­fec­tive­ly re­take con­trol of what he must still con­sid­er "my par­ty." At min­i­mum, he would want to play the spoil­er's role by tar­nish­ing her im­age and re­mov­ing a coat or two of the gloss off Kam­la.

While UNC as a par­ty hard­ly mat­ters in Gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance, Pan­day must have cal­cu­lat­ed that if he is able to un­der­cut po­lit­i­cal leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar, it would salve still-open po­lit­i­cal wounds af­ter the drub­bing he re­ceived from her. Pan­day is a past- mas­ter at the art of pro­mot­ing con­flict; he will sure­ly not hes­i­tate to at­tempt to do so again. In fact it is prob­a­bly his over­rid­ing ob­jec­tive to dis­lodge Per­sad-Bisses­sar from the prime min­is­te­r­i­al chair that is ex­cit­ing the "Sil­ver Fox."

Po­lit­i­cal mau­vais langue has it that Per­sad-Bisses­sar still hears the sound of her for­mer leader's foot­steps be­hind her even though they are grow­ing faint and less threat­en­ing with the pas­sage of time. Those close to the par­ty have said that while Pan­day still com­mands a mea­sure of re­spect and love with­in the UNC, there is lit­tle chance of the Gen­er­a­tion Next can­di­dates win­ning seats in the par­ty ex­ec­u­tive. But Pan­day has al­ready catered for the young team be­ing squan­dered in the elec­tion by rais­ing the is­sue of rigged elec­tions.

In this way Pan­day hopes to un­der­mine the cred­i­bil­i­ty of those elect­ed and their spon­sors, in­clud­ing the po­lit­i­cal leader. For­tu­itous­ly or oth­er­wise, the non-ap­pear­ance of his daugh­ter's name on the vot­ing list has added a mea­sure of cred­i­bil­i­ty to Pan­day's claims that all is not well with the vot­ing process.

The oth­er ma­jor is­sue of the elec­tion is the chal­lenge be­ing posed to in­cum­bent chair­man Jack Warn­er by Ash­vani Ma­habir. The lat­ter does not stack up well com­pared to Jack. But he is said to have the bless­ings of the hi­er­ar­chy of the par­ty, the par­ty leader in­clud­ed. Jack has made no se­cret of his view that the par­ty lead­er­ship is be­hind Ma­habir.

Sat Ma­haraj has sig­nalled to the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty that Ma­habir is his choice. Not as vo­cal as Sat but per­haps as con­vict­ed about Ma­habir as the Ma­ha Sab­ha boss is Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj. Per­haps the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of the UNC con­ceives of this as a clean, non-self-in­crim­i­nat­ing way of con­tin­u­ing to cut the ground un­der the feet of "queen-mak­er" Jack. If he were to be beat­en, the hi­er­ar­chy will reach for the high­er ground of the "peo­ple's will" and trum­pet the vaunt­ed "democ­ra­cy with­in the UNC at work."

But in choos­ing Ma­habir in­stead of one of the po­lit­i­cal heavy­weights, a Mooni­lal or Ram­ba-chan, even a Shar­ma, the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of the UNC and the gov­ern­ment is play­ing it safe. To have thrown one of the above in­to the fray would have shown the hand of the par­ty lead­er­ship oh too plain­ly. But in choos­ing po­lit­i­cal fod­der to throw against Jack it is clear that there is a mea­sure of fear of the awe­some pop­u­lar­i­ty en­joyed by Warn­er amongst the rank and file of the UNC.

A vic­to­ry by Warn­er against one of the cho­sen in­ner Cab­i­net souls would have ef­fec­tive­ly been a po­lit­i­cal as­sault against the queen; that can­not pos­si­bly be risked. That there is such a recog­ni­tion of the pow­er and le­git­i­ma­cy ac­crued by an in­ter­lop­er such as Jack Warn­er is im­pres­sive. Is it be­cause of his deep pock­ets and gen­er­ous spir­it; or per­haps his gen­uine con­cern for peo­ple and his abil­i­ty to get things done?

Pol­i­tics is not al­ways pre­dictable and there may be a "fluke" and Jack is beat­en. But sure­ly, giv­en the po­lit­i­cal char­ac­ter that is Warn­er, if such a fluke were to oc­cur the hi­er­ar­chy risks what may be con­sid­ered an un­holy but very pos­si­ble al­liance be­tween Bas and Jack. How­ev­er, the more like­ly out­come is a com­plete de­feat of the Pan­day slate but the hi­er­ar­chy hav­ing to live with Warn­er.

What­ev­er the out­come of the polls the is­sue must be whether the UNC will be­come a struc­tured and func­tion­ing par­ty. As has been demon­strat­ed, Pan­day de­mol­ished every at­tempt to pro­mote in­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ment; that would have di­min­ished his pow­er. The bad news for the coali­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is if the UNC con­tin­ues to be a par­ty led by a max­i­mum leader, there is lit­tle like­li­hood that the Part­ner­ship will grow in co­her­ence as a po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion.