Dookeran makes his move

That this was always the executive’s intention could not be doubted by any reasonable person. The very fact that the inner circle has been holding political meetings in its traditional support bases without Mr Dookeran shows this. And, in the aftermath of Mr Dookeran having his first major public meeting, the executive has moved with haste to have the Political Leader answer accusations of creating a “parallel organisation” within the party. According to vice-chairman Vasant Bharat, “The issues and concerns of the national executive will be sent to Dookeran by the coming week-end and he will be required to respond at a meeting of the national executive to be specially convened.” The members of the investigating committee are Bharat himself, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Dr Suruj Rambachan, and Dr Daphne Phillips.

The executive has several agendas in taking this step. The first is to humiliate Mr Dookeran by wielding a big stick over him. The second is to demonstrate that the executive is more powerful than the Political Leader. The third, and most important, is to lay the groundwork for getting Mr Dookeran out.

There is some irony here in the fact that Bharat, Gopeesingh, Rambachan and Phillips, while they may be party officers, have no mandate from the people, thousands of whom elected Dookeran in the national elections.

But the manner in which the UNC executive has gone about this hatchet job sends other, unintended messages to the UNC membership and the general public. The fact that it is Mr Bharat, enshrined in the public mind as the “dog rice man”, who announced this move creates an immediate contrast between him and Mr Dookeran. That contrast is not to Mr Bharat’s favour, given Mr Dookeran’s image of honesty and his elder status.

The public would also have noted that the investigating committee is pretty much a kangaroo court, made up of persons who are guaranteed to bring back the verdict the executive wants to hear. Additionally, Persad-Bissessar was invited by Mr Dookeran to attend his meeting, but she refused - thus demonstrating that her previous rhetoric about healing the party was hollow rhetoric. And, finally, the fact that the executive has taken the route of “investigating” Mr Dookeran implies that they prefer to unseat him unilaterally, rather than put the matter to a vote from the UNC membership.

Meanwhile, Mr Dookeran has begun his own counter-campaign. At his public meeting last Wednesday, which was attended by about 500 persons, he vowed that no one would “pull my strings” - a dig at Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who is seen by many as merely warming a seat for UNC leader-in-waiting Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj. Whether Mr Dookeran can whip up enough support amongst the UNC rank-and-file to sideline the executive remains to be seen.

In order to achieve this, however, he must drop the pretence that unity is possible between the two factions. The executive has now made it quite clear, if it wasn’t already, that nothing less than the complete sidelining of Mr Dookeran will satisfy their ambitions.

Mr Dookeran has excused his tactical tact by claiming that he did not want to fracture the party. But, unless he abandons that approach, he will cement his image of ineffectuality, since his tact will be seen as a cover for weakness. Whatever strategy he adopts, there can be no doubt that he is in for a hard battle.