GOOD SENSE MUST PREVAIL

The United National Congress has already begun spouting the expected rhetoric, adopting the line that Mr Panday’s arrest is a political plot. But what else can they say? Mr Panday is innocent until proven guilty, but the police would not have arrested the UNC leader unless they had sufficient evidence to justify such an arrest. Whether that evidence will hold up in court remains to be seen.

The UNC spokespersons, adopting the tit-for-tat argument, also asked why Energy Minister Eric Williams has not been arrested. Again, this is mere rhetoric. The arrest of Mr Panday has come more than five years after allegations about the Piarco Airport project first surfaced. It would be well for our legal system if investigations were carried out more speedily, but the mills of the Police Service grind exceedingly slow, and not always fine.

The Opposition has also suggested that the whole affair is a PNM plot. If so, then it is a very poor strategy on the part of the ruling party. For one thing, it gives Mr Panday a chance to play martyr, which he did by refusing to pay bail and spending the night in prison. For another, if the strategy did work and removed Mr Panday from the UNC’s leadership, this might actually strengthen the Opposition. After all, political polls have implied that Mr Panday is a liability to the party and, paradoxical as it might seem, his being found guilty might actually mobilise ethnic support in a way that would not bode well for a PNM administration clearly failing to come to grips with the problems facing the country.

The PNM hierarchy surely has calculated all this already and, indeed, may be even more unhappy than UNC supporters about this development. But this does not mean that the ruling party does not have a great responsibility, even more than the UNC, to treat with this matter sensitively and responsibly. After all, the populace will at some level understand that the UNC is in defensive mode, and therefore its various allegations will have to be taken with a pinch, or a pound, of salt. But, as the party in power, the PNM cannot afford to play politics with Mr Panday’s arrest. The Government must maintain its distance and let justice take its course.

Most importantly, the police must not be seen as having any political agenda or displaying bias. They started off on the wrong foot by going to Mr Panday’s house armed to the teeth — an intimidating display of force which was certainly unnecessary. Their timing in going to Mr Panday’s office also left a lot to be desired, since he was at the time meeting a delegation of Indian parliamentarians and was scheduled to have lunch with them. Additionally, the Anti-Corruption Bureau already operates under a cloud because it is under the auspices of the Attorney-General’s Office, an arrangement that may well be unconstitutional. For this and other reasons, the investigation into Messrs Franklin Khan and Eric Williams must proceed apace, if only so the police can be seen to be even-handed.

This is politics but, in this situation, politics cannot be avoided if good sense is to prevail. It is also important for the misinformed to know that while Mr Panday’s supporters are inclined to put his "jailing" in the same context as that of Gandhi and Mandela, there is absolutely no similarity. Gandhi was fighting a war of liberation against British imperialism and Mandela was fighting the evil of white South Africa’s apartheid.