Ugly sight

After all, if there is one thing that can be stated with certainty about the chameleon-like Mr Panday, it is that he is all about power and personal aggrandisement. So, no matter how irrational or destructive his actions may seem, his strategy is surely intended to achieve these two goals.

Unfortunately for the country, that strategy seems to embody the lowest kind of politics. This is revealed by Mr Panday’s disingenuousness in explaining why Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj has been invited to be a guest speaker at the UNC’s unity rally next Sunday. Everybody interprets this as a first step in bringing back Mr Maharaj as a key player in the UNC. But Mr Panday says that is not so.

The planned rally, he explains, will focus on the abuse of power by the PNM regime; and Mr Maharaj has been invited as a guest speaker in order to deal with the Chandra Naraynsingh murder case.

That response shows that Mr Panday is relying on voters’ ignorance in order to consolidate his own position. After all, no political leader would give such a silly explanation unless he felt that his grassroots supporters were credulous enough to believe it or that, even if they weren’t, were fanatic enough not to care about being taken for fools. And, given the topic that Mr Maharaj is supposed to speak on, it is clear that Mr Panday intends to pander to his audience’s racial fears in order to whip up political support.

After all, long before Dr Vijay Naraynsingh was freed of charges of conspiracy to murder, UNC spokespersons had taken the line that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the PNM government had targeted Dr Naraynsingh simply because he was a successful "Indian".

The Chandra Naraynsingh murder case is certainly a controversial matter, and it may well be that individuals involved in various aspects of the case — from the DPP to the police to the judge to the lawyers — could be fairly criticised. Or it may be that the case was conducted properly from the start. Such issues are still to be determined.

However, for political spokespersons to claim that there was a conspiracy to set up Dr Naraynsingh, and to further claim that this conspiracy was motivated solely by bigotry, is clearly an attempt to play racial politics.

Mr Panday has always said that one of his main political goals is to bring about racial unity and, in fact, there is much in his career that he can point to as evidence of this. But it is also a fact that Mr Panday will do whatever he feels he has to in order to gain power, and that includes playing the race card.

But to do so at this juncture in the country’s history, when there are so many more substantive criticisms that can be made about the PNM regime, reveals Mr Panday’s true face - and it is not a pretty sight.