Mr Panday’s return

Earlier this week, the UNC’s Women’s Congress and Youth Congress introduced a motion to have Basdeo Panday resume chairmanship of the party. No doubt this was always on the cards, inasmuch as the post has remained vacant ever since Mr Panday was sentenced to two years in jail for failing to declare to the Integrity Commission a $1 million account held in a London bank.

The move to get Mr Panday back has been spearheaded by the party’s executive, which is at odds with the UNC faction led by de jure Political Leader Winston Dookeran. No doubt the executive hopes to put the infighting to an end by having Mr Panday definitively declare who should lead the party. Yet even that obvious fact could not persuade spokespersons for the Dookeran faction to issue a forthright rejection of the move. Instead, fired UNC Senator Sadiq Baksh said, “If the founder of the party wishes to come back, it is his call, not mine,” while his similarly ousted colleague Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan took the same line.

It appears that the Dookeran faction, despite its call for a “new politics,” doesn’t want to risk offending the grassroots core of the UNC by appearing to reject Panday.

Yet the hard fact is this: by introducing this motion, the UNC’s Women’s and Youth Congress are asking a convicted individual to head the party. It is astonishing that the UNC executive does not see this as a liability. Here we have a party which lost office largely because of allegations of rampant corruption.

And, even as former high-ranking members are having their day in court on other matters, the party’s founder, leader, and a former prime minister was sentenced to two years in jail. How does the party’s executive expect to overcome that stigma?

No doubt they will reiterate the line they have touted ad infinitum: that other persons did not declare their assets, but were not singled out. And, admittedly, the distinction between not declaring and making a false declaration will be lost on those persons willing to believe that Mr Panday was persecuted.

Similarly, the fact that Mr Panday was in fact given $1 million by a prominent businessman will make no difference to such supporters, who may even accept Mr Panday’s disingenuous defence that the money was his wife’s and he knew nothing about it.

So it is not beyond possibility that Mr Panday’s return may cement the grassroots support for the executive. But that return will almost certainly uproot any non-grassroots support that the UNC may still have.

Pertinent as the race factor remains to politics, non-partisan voters are unlikely to support a party which embraces a leader convicted of a criminal act. Even Mr Panday understands this, which is why he stepped down as UNC chairman. But the UNC executive, in its fervid desire to have him return, has forgotten that general elections in this country are not won by core support, but by appealing across race and class to an extent sufficient to sway marginal voters.

Mr Panday’s official return to the helm, if it does happen, will therefore work against the UNC in the long run.