What is Panday’s last trick?
Kamla Persad-Bissessar
The defeated and discredited maximum leader has cleared out his desk and slunk away from the UNC’s official opposition office. The question is: what trick does he have up his sleeve?
With Kamla Persad-Bissessar doing pretty well in the opinion polls and being seen as the leader most capable of solving the country’s social and infrastructural problems, her swearing in today, by President Maxwell Richards, as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives is seen as another step in the resurgence of the United National Congress (UNC).
There has been a groundswell of support- or, at least, great interest- throughout the country even in the People’s National Movement- for this woman who maybe up to three months ago did not figure in the UNC’s leadership stakes.
Maximum leader Basdeo Panday, who built the UNC into a powerful political machine, has slunk away as a petulant schoolboy from the party’s Charles Street office. He sacked three persons in the past couple of weeks- two officials at the secretariat and a senator- because they were linked to Kamla.
Kamla is expected to rehire them and is expected to make sweeping changes in the party’s lineup in the Senate which could mean the Leader of the Opposition there Wade Mark going back to the labour movement as a full time trade unionist.
M.F Rahman, who has his own political party, but was appointed in 2007 mainly for his newspaper articles supporting Panday has, in the best Westminster tradition, already submitted his resignation to Kamla.
Apart from this Parliamentary business, Kamla , who was temporarily appointed Opposition Leader four years ago after Panday was convicted of corruption, will have to focus on the upcoming Local Government elections which her revitalised party now has an excellent chance of winning, particularly, if there is some sort of accommodation with the Congress of the Party (COP).
COP leader Winston Dookeran has called for unity talks, something he spurned while Panday was around.
With the Government being at its lowest level of popularity, according to the opinion polls and with Prime Patrick Manning, on the defensive, with charges of corruption and links to a mystery church hounding him, the next few months will be interesting indeed.
In the meantime, Panday, the perennial spoiler, may have some last trick up his sleeve.