Yo ho ho and a bottle of UNC rum!
Panday and Kamla in happier times
Some 35,000 UNC members are eligible to vote today to elect a political leader, chairman and other party officials. Who will it be, Basdeo Panday, the man who founded the party, Kamla or Ramesh?
Political parties, as a rule, don’t hold internal elections during the Carnival season.
The United National Congress (UNC) has chosen do otherwise and will hold such elections today and the process has been one of utter ole mas’. The campaign has degenerated into an orgy of character assassination; allegations of grand larceny; accusations of voter padding and a potentially rigged elections and members switching loyalties regularly.
The incumbent, who has been known to enjoy a drink of Johnny Walker Black, has attempted to paint his female rival Kamla Persad-Bissessar, one of his loyalists over the years, as a drunkard and has repeatedly called on Jack Warner, one of the party’s financiers and a man who stood bail for him and his wife, Oma, to account for $30 million in campaign fund entrusted to him.
One minute Warner, Ramesh Lawrence-Maharaj, the other contender for the political leadership, and Winston “Gypsy” Peters are allies of the so-called Ramjack faction which called on Panday to step down, the next minute Warner and Gypsy are supporting Kamla and Maharaj appears to be surreptitiously backing Panday. The average UNC member or supporter can surely be excused for being confused not unlike the general public.
To compound the confusion one day the Vishnu Bisram NACTA polls have Persad-Bissesar ahead by a large margin, the next it is Panday in the lead or Maharaj.
This morning the poll has Panday ahead by 38 points followed by Maharaj with 27 per cent and Persad-Bissessar with 23 points. That is what a page 3 story on the Sunday Guardian reported but in a wide-ranging interview on page 7 Bisram declares “Kamla is the favourite because she has the backing of the dual COP (Congress of the People) members……..Ramesh is trailing but picking up steam.”
Voting opened at 8a.m today and is scheduled to end at 5p.m. with some 35,000 members in the party’s controversial electoral list eligible to vote. There will be 37 polling stations throughout the country.
Apologists for the UNC claim that the vicious campaigning with personal attacks on personalities who at one time were vigorously flying the party flag is not unlike the primaries in the United States where politicians from the same party attack each other.
The answer to such an argument is the fact that the United States has a political party tradition that is older and much more developed and democratic than Trinidad and Tobago. Secondly it is a bigger society and thirdly vulgarity poses as sophistication.
Regardless, of the outcome today what the UNC leadership campaign has accomplished is to make the unpopular People’s National Movement (PNM) look good- and the proverbial devil- that- you- know alternative if there is a snap election.