Dookeran’s D-day

So the rank-and-file of the United National Congress have a difficult challenge. Attendance would send a message that the UNC base wants Mr Panday to return as the official leader of the party, and that Winston Dookeran should step aside. Staying away would send a message that the party is unfit to lead the country. Yet there are many UNC members, as well as politically neutral citizens, who would want to attend this event for other reasons — not least among them being to demonstrate disapproval of the ruling PNM’s policies and attitude.

However, the split within the UNC has made this option impossible. With Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj on the outside coming in, the Panday and Dookeran partnership seems to have met an irreconcilable difference. So, unless some sort of last-minute deal is brokered, it seems that the two sides have drawn battle-lines that allow little leeway for compromise.

But it is difficult to see how Mr Dookeran can stay in bed with Mr Panday, unless Mr Maharaj is taken out of the picture. Mr Dookeran’s prime concern must be that, if Ramesh once again takes up a major role in the UNC, it will be just a matter of time before Dookeran is shunted aside. This is not because Mr Maharaj is seen as a charismatic leader or, indeed, even a trustworthy one. But no one doubts that he is a formidable persona, because of his legal skills and immense energy. Indeed, it may be significant that Housing Minister Keith Rowley hinted in Parliament last Friday that there had been plans to bring Ramesh into the PNM. This suggests an attempt to taint Mr Maharaj politically — and that in itself may hint that the PNM considers its electoral chances better against a Dookeran-led UNC than against a Ramesh Maharaj-led one.

But if Maharaj returns to the UNC, it puts Mr Dookeran in an invidious position as political leader. If he allows the return, he will simply cement in citizens’ minds the lame-duck image that he has been fighting since he became the party’s leader — an image that has been created partly by Mr Panday’s refusal to relinquish the limelight and partly by Mr Dookeran’s inability to grab it.

But Mr Dookeran also has an image of integrity, and that may be a key factor in the turnout today (apart from the surety that the Panday faction will be busing in people to swell the crowd). Mr Panday, after all, only stepped down as political leader because the fraud allegations against him had made him a liability. And his faction received another body blow just days ago, when FIFA found that Jack Warner, a key Panday supporter and financier, was guilty of breaching FIFA’s ethical guidelines by getting World Cup tickets for a travel agency he owns.

If the UNC membership indeed believes that the party’s corrupt image is the main barrier to their return to office, then the Panday/Warner/ and others in that group will not be successful in getting real support today. On the other hand, if the day of maximum leadership has still not seen the setting sun, then that faction will prevail in this internal dispute. But such grassroots support will not easily translate into electoral victory — and that still remains the main challenge for the Opposition, no matter what happens today.