Panday shows who’s boss

After all, the so-called "unity meeting" was scuttled from the start by Mr Dookeran being in New York at the time it was held. It is obviously impossible to have a meeting to bring two factions together when the leader of one of the factions is not present. Indeed, it may well be that this meeting was Mr Panday’s counter to the one called by Mr Dookeran last month, when he summoned the key figures from the Patriots side, to his home. Mr Panday’s meeting, calculatedly, was not convened at either his house or even the Rienzi Complex. Instead, he held it at the office of the Leader of the Opposition — presumably to make the point that it is he who wields official power.

So the unity meeting turned out to be a farce. Missing from it were key UNC members like Roodal Moonilal, Manohar Ramsaran, Ganga Singh, and Gerald Yetming. Neither did the so-called "Independent UNC members," Gillian Lucky and Fuad Khan, turn up. In fact, Mr Panday’s unity meeting boiled down to his reunification with one man — Jack Warner.

Mr Warner had, until last Friday, been Mr Panday’s second sternest UNC critic (after Mr Yetming) and a staunch supporter of Mr Dookeran as the party’s Political Leader. After stating in previous weeks that

Mr Panday could not be part of any team facing the electorate, Mr Warner has now apologised "profusely," to use his own term, and abandoned his plan to remove Mr Panday as Opposition Leader. Mr Warner offered no real explanation for his about-face, and citizens will have to stay in the dark since he stated categorically that the public will be better off not knowing what the internal disputes of the UNC are.

This is the approach which has been taken by Mr Dookeran, who has made only tactful noises in response to all the brouhaha, including this latest development. His main objective, he has stated, is to keep the UNC together. But what does he plan to do if Mr Panday has a different objective — to wit, sideline Mr Dookeran and his Progressives and replace them with persons who accept Mr Panday as the maximum leader he is?

This is hardly beyond possibility. Every action Mr Panday has taken since the UNC’s internal election in October suggests that he never intended Mr Dookeran to be more than a figurehead — an image of integrity that would staunch the UNC’s haemorrhaging political support until Mr Panday found it opportune to step up to the front again.

With the pending return of Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj to the UNC fold, and with the newfound popularity of Mr Warner because of his role as the Soca Warriors’ shepherd, Mr Panday may have advanced his schedule.

But what he and Mr Warner seem to forget — or more likely do not believe — is that the voters who they need in order to be successful at the polls are still looking at the UNC with a jaundiced eye. Lame duck though he may be, it is those necessary voters that the UNC cannot win without Mr Dookeran.