PANDAY'S SWANSONG?

The grinding defeat of the United National Congress by the People's National Movement in Monday's Local Government Elections represents not simply a dismissal of a Party, which held the reins of Central Government for six years, 1995-2001, but the generalship of its political leader, Basdeo Panday.

The PNM took control of areas, which, for what seemed like generations, had tacitly borne the stamp “Opposition Property”, winning such unlikely seats as Edinburgh/Longdenville and Enterprise North in Chaguanas; Apex/Fyzabad — Siparia; Hindustan/Indian Walk/St Mary's and Moruga in Princes Town and California/Point Lisas. Panday's tiresome leadership style, with which the voters had clearly grown disillusioned, had been a factor. But what perhaps had been the critical factor had been the clear reluctance of the Panday-led UNC Administrations of 1995-2000 and 2000-2001 to deal sensibly, or at all, with the issue of the approaching end of preferential entry status of Trinidad and Tobago sugar to the European Union, and the loss of employment it would trigger, particularly in Central Trinidad.

Had the UNC Government explained to the sugar workers and their families that the end of the Lome Convention, under which preferential entry of sugar to the EU had been guaranteed, and the United States position upheld by the World Trade Organisation WTO on the principle of preferential entry, meant the limiting of sugar industry earnings, the workers and by extension the voters may have stayed with the Party. In turn, had the Government put in place mechanisms for dealing with life after Lome, they may have held on to the areas they lost to the PNM. But only may. Instead, the United National Congress, clearly afraid to be the Party to restructure Caroni 1975 Limited, and put an end to more than 9,000 direct jobs at Caroni, and untold thousands more indirect jobs, hemmed and hawed. A UNC Administration should have marketed the idea of new job creation through the distribution of land to sugar workers (by way of lease arrangements or as separation gifts to workers of say 20 years service and more) for agricultural development. 

And rather than the present People's National Movement Administration having to be the one to offer sugar workers separation benefits 24 percent in excess of what the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union had negotiated with Caroni under a UNC Government, this had it been done during 1995-2001 would have reaped political rewards. Instead, what the sugar workers perceived, or indeed had been allowed to perceive, however unintentionally, was that an allegedly corrupt UNC Government had not been prepared to concern itself with such a trivial thing as their (the sugar workers') economic future and welfare and that of their families. To add insult to the proverbial injury, the leadership of All Trinidad had taken issue with Government's offer of a Voluntary Separation of Employment Programme (VSEP) to sugar workers. The Union sought and won an injunction in the Industrial Court, preventing (during the life of the injuntion) the employer from offering the VSEP and/or from implementing it. It was a tactical blunder, which in the end would be a contributory factor in the UNC's loss of political face, and ipso facto poor showing in this week's Local Government Elections. It was an absurd situation. Here, in effect, was a Union, which had agreed to a level of separation benefits for its workers, objecting, for whatever the reasons advanced, to a 24-percent enhancement of those same benefits.

Several workers, anxious for an early receipt of the 124 percent separation benefits, with which they could have gone into small business, including sugar cane production, protested that they had not instructed the Union's leadership to object to the offer. In the end, with the issue settled and the injunction lifted, the Union would shamelessly announce it would advise the workers to accept the VSEP offer, and seek to advance their new position, by inference, as a victory. The argument, or rather lack of it, was unclear. What was clear on Monday, however, was that the United National Congress' sugar base would have none of it and had begun to unravel.    Several reasons have been advanced by UNC spokesmen for the Party's humiliating display in the Elections. One was that the PNM Government had embarked on a programme of projects — pipe laying, electrification and what have you. But did the UNC Administration in late 2002 not embark on a hurried programme of road paving, which, unfortunately, had shown the darker side of the Government, what with the cost of materials suddenly skyrocketing, and inferior work being done in many areas?  Just for the record: Was it by coincidence that some of the pumps at WASA's Cascade pumping station, suddenly went on the blink on Friday, virtually on the eve of the Local Government Elections, resulting in several areas of St. Anns, being without pipe borne water.  Many affected residents received “a merry dance” on enquiring of WASA when water would be restored.  Surprisingly, water was suddenly restored on Monday afternoon.

It does strike one that Monday's Local Government Elections may very well be Basdeo Panday's political swansong.  He led his Party to a 20-16 defeat in last year's General Election, and to a 9-4 Regional Corporations defeat on Monday. Some three years ago, I had described Panday as irrelevant to the political process in Trinidad and Tobago Today, he is even more irrelevant. The sugar belt, in particular, which has been “short changed” by the United National Congress has hit back at the Party. The sugar belt has seen many Opposition parties representing it come and go. Bhadase Sagan Maraj's People's Democratic Party, gave way to the Democratic Labour Party, and his leadership to that of Dr Rudranath Capildeo. Later, the leadership shifted to that of Vernon Jamadar. But the Jamadar-led DLP would, in turn, give way to the United Labour Front, which went even beyond the sugar belt, to embrace oil and other areas, allocating it to wider based support, with such figures as George Weekes, Raffique Shah and Errol McLeod. The ULF would lose the support of Shah, President General of Trinidad Islandwide Cane Farmers' Association, and oil, and, weakened, form an accommodation with the Democratic Action Congress and Organisation of National Reconstruction to form the NAR, from which the ULF faction would break in 1988 to form Club '88, and later the UNC. The UNC, like the ULF, the DLP and the PDP have failed because of leadership styles and focussing on the sugar belt alone. The time may be ripe for a truly national Opposition Party, as perhaps the ULF had reached out to be and failed because its leadership failed.