Admire him or revile him: Basdeo Panday can justifiably claim many distinctions.
• He is the first PM to have in his leadership exhibited a total immunity to infection from the corrosive, malign legacy of the late Eric Williams.
• As a result of the foregoing, he has been and remains the most maligned and persecuted ex-PM to date.
• Basdeo Panday led the most progressive, effective and equitable ruling dispensation to date. This is supported by the increased majority vote with which the UNC returned to power in 2000 and no less so by obtaining more votes than the PNM the following year. His was the first political dispensation since ‘56 during which neither Indo nor Afro were uncomfortable with each other, and minorities—like the one from which I am descended—were no longer scapegoats or natural enemies.
• Panday’s final and least flattering distinction—after his removal as PM on 24/12/01—was that of the most ineffective Leader of the Opposition yet. While understandable after the betrayal within his own Cabinet (which delivered him and his government into the hands of his nemesis), he had to be removed, and I applauded his removal in the national interest.
In order to better appreciate the politician and PM that was Basdeo Panday, let us make comparison with some predecessors and successors. These views are my own.
Eric Williams was a cold, warped and amoral genius. That genius was devoted not to the national welfare but to the acquisition and retention of political power at any price. It was further effectively employed in the brainwashing of the entire nation in an attempt to ensure PNM hegemony in perpetuity. His sins against society, which linger yet, are so diverse and egregious as to render irrelevant any compensating achievement.
ANR Robinson was a misplaced PM. He was selected only because the malign legacy of Eric Williams dictated that T&T was not yet ready to accept Panday as our first Indo PM. Robinson made short work of the Panday-ULF faction, in the absence of which the NAR faced certain defeat in ‘86. Thus emasculated, the rump NAR presented an irresistible target for Abu Bakr on 27/7/90.
Of Robinson’s successor, Patrick Manning, it may be most charitably stated that a fool and the national patrimony are easily parted. This was demonstrated via his unplanned haste to raise the skyline of Port-of-Spain with unoccupied and expensive white elephants. In my humble opinion, Manning, if not as intelligent, was equally as devious as his and Robinson’s mentor.
While T&T in 2010 might have been ready for its first female PM, Kamla Persad-Bissessar is neither a Maggie Thatcher nor even a Eugenia Charles. She has adequately proven that T&T is far from ready for “petticoat” political power. It is claimed that Panday still suffers political tabanca since 24/12/01. I personally hope that despite his advanced age, T&T has not yet heard the last from this politician of rare and demonstrated leadership capabilities.
At its very worst, a political alliance twixt two stalwarts, Basdeo Panday and Jack Warner, can only provide a significant improvement over the quality of leadership which currently obtains. The alternative of either a further bungling by the KPB UNC or the characteristic racism and institutionalised corruption of a Rowley PNM does not bear contemplation. Keep talking, gentlemen, and may your deliberations result in the salvation of our anguished country.
TG Mendes
via e-mail