Keep Calm & Stay the Course...

I am tempted to make a joke and say that I am throwing my hat in the ring for political leader of the Congress of the People like my partner veteran journalist, activist and columnist Peter O'Connor has, but i fear this election may do further damage to the already struggling party and i really don't want no part in that bacchanal.

But before taking my hand out of the lion's mouth I have to ask, what was Winston Dookeran thinking? I mean, seriously, if you really believed in the 'new politics' that you have been peddling all of these years, shouldn't it at least include a response to a clear and present need as articulated by the membership of the party and a wide cross section of the public as well if it were ever to have value? I mean, flirting is nice, but if you never intended to follow through and consummate the relationship, what was all the slow dances and flowers for?

Already party founders and stalwarts are publicly dissociating themselves from the organization based on his abdication of the responsibility to come back and rescue what he spawned, but then, regular followers will recall that i had warned of this two years ago when I publicly resigned from that party that I had given so much to, that without some manic intervention the party and all it stood for was going to die.

Don't get me wrong, for the small middle class swing vote the COP brand is still important for them to say they have somewhere to belong politically and that will never change, and in a world of razor thin differences in the marginals that may continue to be just enough to keep the COP relevant in the national politics.

My biggest concern at this point is the ILP funded cabal within that party working hard to either destroy it or wrench it from the Partnership to further weaken the PP. If Jack were successful in the LGE many white wearing COP members today would have been green with glee and many of them have had to 'mash a brakes' and wait until further instructions and that is something the political leadership needs to confront and resolve regardless of the fallout, before the cancer gets bone deep.

Prakash Ramadhar needs to find his backbone and demonstrate his ability to lead. For all his much maligned weakness though, it is a testimony to his strength as political leader that the COP is still a member of the PP despite the constant 'engineered' upheavals within that party and that is not something to sneeze at.

Can Carolyn Seepersad Bachan be as successful in the position? Well not if she is judged by those who claim her, because, were she victorious i fear the next step would be an ultimatum to the UNC that that party could never agree to, leaving the COP no option but to play the only card it ever really had, to walk.

And then what? Does it then deliver its members to the ILP/PNM? Or worse, become politically neutered again in a world ruled by the PNM?

Right now the last thing the COP needs is maverick politics, and while it may sound sexy to want to lift up your leg and kick down the door, what happens if it leads to an empty room? Make no mistake, if you gamble with your political future and you give the UNC an either/or, you better be very prepared to live with the consequences of that action if it runs awry.

IF i were to advise anyone it would be to vote for stability and continue the course past 2015. It may not be perfect but it is much, MUCH better than what we had in 2010, and who says the best must be the enemy of the good anyway?

The People's Partnership government for all its faults is still far and away the best government that this country has ever had and has delivered pound for pound more results in a shorter time frame than anybody in our history has, the Queen herself included.

While things may not be perfect it's clearly getting better everyday, and that alone should be reason enough to stay the course.