Politically Incorrect
Psycho-politically speaking, Basdeo Panday must be a very disappointed man and Patrick Manning a very elated man. As matters stand now, Panday will most likely exit active politics without ever winning a general election, while Manning will most likely remain as prime minister for this five-year period and, not impossibly, the next five years as well. Panday will go out a loser after being ushered into office on a winning foundation, while Manning will stay a while longer as a winner after a disgraceful enforced error in which he virtually handed the reins of government to Panday.
How have things turned around!
Panday's inevitable ascension to the prime ministership was not without struggle and intrigue. The Indo constituency which he came to represent from a base in the sugar industry had been knocking on the door of government since the early days of Williams and Capildeo, at one time Trinidad and Tobago's 'two bright men' internationally. Williams won government with a coalition of constituencies comprised of an Afro-Christian core (in both Trinidad and Tobago) and a periphery constituted of Indo-Muslims, Indo-Hindus, French Creoles, Syrians, and others. Capildeo lost with an Indo-Hindu core and a very sparse periphery. After Capildeo, Vernon Jamadar and Bhadase Maraj knocked to no avail. And then came the NAR.
The Panday-led ULF, the Hudson-Phillips-led ONR, the Robinson-led DAC, and the Best-led Tapia determined that they could not on their own defeat the overbearing PNM, and so teamed up as the Robinson-led NAR and swept them away. But with Robinson as prime minister, Panday chafing quietly then openly for the job, Robinson attempting to steal Panday's constituency, and the Muslimeen briefly overthrowing the government, the NAR (and, with it, the ONR) literally crashed. And the ULF regrouped as the UNC, taking most of the ONR in the process. They increased their tally of seats in the next general election (1991), but did not have enough to beat a PNM reinvigorated under Manning.
And then came the most serious of Manning's many faux pas - the premature calling of an election in the misguided hope of winning more than the simple majority of seats he had at the time. Instead of winning more seats, Manning lost seats, sliding to 17 (all in Trinidad), with the UNC's tally increasing to 17 (all also in Trinidad), and with the remaining two (in Tobago) taken by Robinson's DAC. Robinson teamed up with Panday, and so it was that, after knocking on the door of government since the Williams days, the core Indo-Hindu constituency, led now by Panday in the political outfit called the UNC, was ushered into power. But it was not to stay there as long as the core Afro-Christian constituency did under the political outfit called the PNM.
It enjoyed a whole five-year term in government (1995-2000), but the ostensibly shrewed Panday made so many errors that the UNC crashed out of power in the first year of its second five-year term that it had won with 19 seats, 16 having been won by the PNM (which took one of the Tobago seats), with the other seat in Tobago won by the NAR (in the clothing of the DAC). The act that catapulted it out of power was the withdrawal of support of three of its parliamentarians - Ramesh Maharaj, Trevor Sudama, and Ralph Maraj - on the grounds of corruption by high officials in the government and a takeover of the government by johnny-come-lately political investors. But that act was preceded by an endless series of politically egregious acts by Panday and most of his ministers.
Insufficient space dictates mention of only a few. The most egregious was without a doubt the alienation of the Tobago NAR. With the electoral figures close in Trinidad, Panday chose to rule in 1995-2000 as if the NAR had not given him the government. He purchased the PNM's Rupert Griffith and Vincent Lasse, fired the NAR-chosen senators Agnes Williams and Nathaniel Moore (replacing them with his own people, albeit Tobagonians), sided with defected NAR parliamentarian Morgan Job against Tobago NAR leader Hochoy Charles, and lambasted Robinson, UNC kingdom-giver-turned-President.
Other egregious errors were: appointment of an unprecedented number of electoral losers as government ministers; declaration and waging of war against the media; indianisation of the hierarchy in the state enterprises and elsewhere; refusal to accept the results of party elections that included Ramesh Maharaj as deputy political leader; serious indications of possible corruption on his part as well as on the part of other senior officials in his government; recklessness in government spending; and refusal to take action on blatant indications of corruption in his government.
It was too much for the non-Indo constituency as well as a not insignificant section of the Indo constituency to bear. The PNM took the Tobago seats twice in succession (2001, 2002) and, in this year's election, two of the marginal seats that had been held by the UNC.
These errors have put Panday back in the wilderness of the opposition where he has had a long residency. He is now 70 and, therefore, unlikely to retake the prime ministership again, especially as he admits to a loss of appetite for the job of opposition leader and as the party is increasingly thinking of succession. He now seems destined to exit active politics not only without having won any general election, but also in the bosom of a collapse of his hype that he would have been prime minister as long as Manning remained leader of the PNM.
Manning, I tell you, must be a very elated man.
Archives / Winford James Homepage / Previous Page
^^ Back to top
