Deconstructing Panday Again
In a column on October 07, 2001, I argued that Basdeo Panday was, among other things, a political tyrant and dinosaur who will plumb the credulity of his sycophantic supporters to the limit to hold on to the dictatorial and corruptive powers of prime ministerial office. Today, he is not in office, but the attitude and personality are still there, bolstered, not without some political justification, by the 18-18 tie. So in today's column, I continue in the same vein, adducing other support for the thesis.
Perhaps the most indicative action of the persona described is his refusal to acknowledge Patrick Manning as the legally appointed prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. President Robinson interpreted the constitution - and Panday himself too, initially in the infamous Crowne Plaza accord - to give the president the power to appoint a prime minister in the context of a tie, but Panday later disagreed with that interpretation to the extent of refusing both to abide by his agreement with Manning to elect Prof. Max Richards as speaker and to accept the office of opposition leader. He favours the view, by statement and implication of his actions, that the legally correct thing would have been for Mr. Robinson to re-elect him as prime minister. It is in this sense that Manning's appointment is held to be illegal and illegitimate.
Further, Panday fancies himself as king and governor who can't be wrong, his perspective corrupted, no doubt, by his recent taste of power and by the ethnic sycophancy of thousands of his supporters. Which is why he could say, in the matter of his call for civil disobedience, 'As you know, I never back down.' That statement, I think, is the most indicative of his persona that I have heard from him.
He didn't back down in the matter of Mr. Robinson's delay in appointing replacements for senators Nathaniel Moore and Agnes Williams, Tobago NAR appointees, whom he had fired. He didn't back down in the standoff between himself and Mr. Robinson over his desire for seven losing UNC candidates in the 2000 general elections to be appointed senators and eventually ministers. He didn't back down over his desire not to have Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj as deputy political leader of the UNC, even though the man had been lawfully elected. He didn't back down….
And now he is not backing down from his position that Manning's prime ministership is illegal and illegitimate and that there should be executive powersharing between the PNM and the UNC on the basis of the tie, or else an early return to the polls.
In all of this, it does not matter whether either his sycophants or his detractors or those on neutral ground understand him; it is sufficient that he holds whatever positions and understandings that he does as king and governor of a large tribe in the country.
It is not a question of logic or rationality, but of political possibility and convenience. If Manning's appointment is illegal because he didn't win the elections, then so would be / would have been Panday's, because he didn't win either. If Panday refuses to agree on a neutral speaker, then he couldn't expect Manning to if the positions of both men were reversed. And most crucial of all, if we have been having close results in general elections in recent times and a tie most recently, then what is there to convince us that early general elections would change the price of cocoa?
It is not logic at all that matters, but what is politically possible and convenient. I am on record as having said that it is politically legitimate for Panday to do what he is doing. But that doesn't mean that it is not politically legitimate for his detractors and the neutralists to find him illogical and contradictory and self-serving and deserving of condemnation. As Panday himself likes to say, it is for the people to decide (and, indeed, the people will in due course!), but it is not for him to dictate when the people must decide. That, under the present law, is for Manning to decide, whether Panday likes it or not.
By the way, give me constitutional power-sharing any day rather than executive power-sharing outside a constitution. And, look here, Tobago must be at the centre of things!
Deconstructing Panday
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