It comes down to reality

I agree with Chandresh Sharma - the breaking-into and trashing of his constituency office could have been politically motivated. But, unlike Sharma, I would not chalk the vandalism up to the work of people seeking files on local election discrepancies. Not, me. Were I the representative for Fyzabad, I would look to my backyard for the source of my troubles, to the growing number of disenchanted constituents within it. I would be very worried that UNC supporters were growing completely weary of my daily prostration before a dictatorial leader with no political future. I’d wonder if the destruction of my office were not a wake up call from these.

Me, if I were named Chandresh Sharma, I would take a good long look at those torn down posters of my once revered chief, now on my office ground, and read the angry writing on the wall. The message of the furious act was as loud as it was lucid: “Panday has to go and you have to make him go.” If I were Sharma, I would heed the cry for new leadership emanating from the belly of the UNC, from places such as Fyzabad, Princes Town, Oropouche, Siparia, and Couva. Rising Sun supporters were tugging their hair more than PNM members had during Patrick Manning’s worst late nineties days, and they were asking: “Why won’t Basdeo Panday go? And why won’t that bunch of cowards around him stand up to him?” Were I the southern member of the Lower House, I would answer the people’s questions, explain the reasons why I and 14 members just like me did not have the guts to stop Panday from completely sinking the UNC. I would say why men such as Roodal Moonilal and I and women such as Gillian Lucky and Kamla Persad-Bissessar still feared Panday so. Why they were allowing a misguided missile to take aim at non-issues and talk nonsense about rebellion and struggles when such discourse had no resonance in the new Trinidad and Tobago landscape. I would share my rationale for permitting the UNC boss to run rampant over my own political career. I would tell my constituents what hold Panday had over me.

If Sharma and his 14 brothers and sisters in the Lower House did not answer these questions and respond to them soon, they could expect many more Panday images to be torn down. Then, after there were no more pictures of the UNC leader to be dragged to the ground, those bearing the faces of Sharma and his colleagues might be next. The people bringing them down to earth would be UNC supporters, fed up of listening to Panday say he was willing to leave, but that he was not leaving; and tired of seeing Sharma and others hang onto Panday’s useless political coattails, doing his senseless bidding. UNC members believed that Panday would not move aside and on because he would never make room for his nemesis, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj. He would rather see the party die. They also believed that people such as Sharma, were too preoccupied with helping Panday keep Maharaj out, instead of getting busy throwing Panday out. If any of the MPs had a chance at the leadership, their own ambition, expressed always in the form of cowardice and sycophancy, was making them lose that opportunity. UNC supporters were no longer blaming Maharaj, but the men and women around Panday, for the party’s defeats, even as Panday continued his attacks on his fired Attorney General. “Anybody who thinks he could come forward and form another political party, is only fooling himself,” Panday shouted last Monday night at Rienzi. “Take that and put it in your back pocket and go home and smoke it.” To who were these words directed if not to Maharaj, who was probably watching the scene on television, wondering how he and National Team Unity had got into the act when they had not contested the local poll?

Panday was saying that he might have been beaten in the local government election, but he and the UNC, one and the same, would continue it/their/his existence that was not political nor one with any real power. No one, Maharaj, that is, would ever replace it/ them/ him. And, his MPs let him talk his self-serving, irrelevant talk, while the PNM came marching in. It was not a message that UNC supporters needed to hear again, or a sight they wished anymore to see, which is why most stayed away from Rienzi Complex on Monday night. Whether or not Maharaj now wanted part of the UNC was irrelevant to them, they wanted him.  They might not adore him, but many saw him as their only hope. Panday’s silly speech on Monday was not appetising to the political palate of the non-aligned, either, which is why these must have steupsed when listening to the broadcast from Rienzi. Trinidad and Tobago, in the hands of Panday, and thanks to Sharma etc., seemed to be spinning backwards in time, to the days of one party rule, to the times of the Balisier supreme. There was no worthy Opposition. Not even the PNM’s apparent inability to stem murders or kidnappings were reasons enough, to convince the electorate to vote UNC. PNM supporters just laughed on Monday night. They must have been elated to hear that for Panday, the bigger enemy was still not they, but Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj. They celebrated Panday’s alienation of his own, the empty chairs at Rienzi. However, most of all they toasted Sharma and his peers for keeping Panday on his perch, poised for the political comeback that would never come. For making, the Balisier feel more welcome in UNC land than the Rising Sun. To whom else were they supposed to express their gratitude? To Basdeo Panday? He wasn’t keeping him aloft. Sharma and his wishy-washy pals were.

Suzanne Mills is the Editor of the daily Newsday