Panday Must Go!

The UNC is a party based mainly on Indian support. The PNM, on the other hand, is an African based party founded by Eric Williams. Had Williams not been sacked by the Caribbean Commission he would never have returned to Trinidad and Tobago to enter politics. The Africans had never before had a political leader of their own. They made him into a political messiah. He rode on their backs and left them in the slums!

Williams was a vindictive man and the present PNM continues in the same vein. According to Nikola Mitchell in the Mirror of 2nd September, 2005, "What Williams created in 1961 was antagonism towards the Indians, especially the Hindus." His defeat at the hands of Bhadase in the 1958 Federal Elections rankled in his breast! Dr Winston Mahabir, was used as others still may be, to unleash scathing attacks on Indians.

In his book In and Out of Politics Dr Winston Mahabir belatedly confessed that he was not a window for Williams to look into the Indians community, but was mere window dressing to give the PNM a facade of multi-racial composition! The "philosophy" of the PNM and the composition of the two parties remain as racially rooted as ever. Both are steeped in race prejudice!

The only difference is that the PNM which has sat in power for almost every term since 1956, has the capacity to oppress and discriminate against those who oppose them. But, mirabile dictu, the PNM has consistently failed to uplift the deplorable condition of its African supporters. After 43 years they remain at the bottom of the pile! And now a smelter plant in their midst!

After 43 years of independence, they are left without schools, without jobs, living in squalid, filthy slums and turning to crime for survival. And someone with the wherewithal is supplying them with drugs and guns to kill one another! For them, the more things change, the more they have remained the same! So said Williams himself in French in 1961! But they continue to support PNM! They love the shackles! They like it so!

It is the PNM which has failed to empower its grass root African support! Yet one supporter in Laventille tells the Prime Minister that if the Indians come into political power there will be war! Let Selwyn Cudjoe answer whether or not it is the PNM which dismally failed to empower its Africans supporters!

Never has the PNM been weaker than it is today! It is ripe for the picking. Its African supporters are living in poverty and are driven to crimes of the worst kind — kidnapping, robbery and murder.

They fill the jails! Some, hardly literate, find escape in the Police Service and the army. Small wonder there is an abuse of power and corruption. The dark cloud of corruption now enshrouds the PNM. Yesterday it was the UNC which was smeared with the brush of corruption which still hangs like the sword of Damocles over them. The PNM is like a boxer drifting around with no sense of direction, waiting for someone to deliver a knock-out punch. The integrity of Winston Dookeran will attract support from all quarters.

What is needed at the moment is not political cunning for survival. What is a sine qua non is impeccable integrity. There are always those who can advise on political strategies and policies. Who we need at the helm of the UNC is a man over whom no shadow of impropriety can be cast. Winston Dookeran should have three deputies of equal status — Wade Mark, Yetming and Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

Panday never slaved to build any party. He merely trundled about in Bhadase’s ill-fitting boots. He may have done well for himself. Where was he in the sugar cane workers’ great moment of need? Playing golf? Gone were the days of the cane-cutting cutlass for him!

If the supporters of the UNC want to come out of the dungeon of despair and have a good chance to win the next election, then they must not be moved to sympathy by the claims of Panday that he slaved for them. They were abandoned and left to fend for themselves. They grew poorer! They lost their jobs by the thousands! The sugar industry, like rice cultivation and agriculture in general, has been deliberately and systematically destroyed by the PNM government.

Their hope of winning the next general elections lies in dispelling the cloud of corruption which engulfs the UNC. Winston Dookeran as leader of the party must have no stumbling block or internal threat to his leadership. I salute Jack Warner for his perspicacity and declaration of support for Dookeran! Our country’s advancement and our children’s future lie in our hands — both African and Indian and voters of every other race in our cosmopolitan nation.

We must cleanse ourselves of race as the motivation for political support. If we don’t hang together we shall all sink even lower than we are today. Up to now the rich have grown richer and the poor have become dangerously poor. May God guide us.