TACTICAL MOVE BY UNC?

Sunday’s decision by the United National Congress to ask Basdeo Panday to stay on as Political Leader may have been a compromise designed to head off a successorship struggle with the potential to divide the Party. In turn, the Party’s strategy to have the position of Deputy Political Leader filled through direct election, rather than leaving it up to the Political Leader to choose the Deputy, appears to have been a move to have a clear cut successor to Panday. Once this is achieved in the upcoming United National Congress elections, with a tentative July deadline, how soon Panday may step down or be succeeded may be academic.
 
In a larger sense the move with respect to resolving the issue of how accession to the post of Deputy Political Leader should be decided may have been seen by UNC power brokers as far more important to the Party and its supporters than the resolution moved in the name of Jamal Mohammed and seconded by UNC Chairman, Senator Wade Mark, asking Panday to remain on as Political Leader. Some disinterested observers may be tempted to conclude, particularly as the Mohammed/ Mark resolution received the clear cut overwhelming support of United National Congress supporters at the Party’s General Congress on Sunday at the Rienzi Complex, that it was an invitation for Panday to stay on indefinitely. But this support was not without a touch of sentiment, however, moreso within the rank and file voters.
 
It was a repeat of December 2, 1973, when then Political Leader of the People’s National Movement, late Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams, who had on September 28 (1973) announced his decision not to stand for re-election as Political Leader, reversed that decision, following a resolution moved by Daniel Reid and seconded by Inez Montenegro. Williams’ apparent change of heart was supported by the Party’s Convention. And this, ironically, as after Dr Williams advised he would not stand for re-election, representatives of 299 Party Groups voted for former Attorney General, Karl Hudson-Phillips, to succeed him, while 26 voted for Cabinet Minister, Kamaluddin Mohammed.   
 
And perhaps in much the same way that support for the motion, sentiment apart, may have been aimed more at preventing the acceding of Karl Hudson-Phillips to Political Leadership of the PNM, although a majority of the Party’s 476 Party Groups had voted for him, support for Sunday’s motion may have been aimed at heading off any possible move to have former UNC Attorney General, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, lead the UNC. There is another and perhaps more powerful factor in the political equation. Panday’s stepping down without a clear cut successor could have created a vacuum, and led to a bitter struggle for leadership of the United National Congress leaving it not only rudderless, but effectively weakened with the possibility of losing even more seats in the next Local Government Elections and General Election than it had in the last.