Where it All Went Wrong for the COP...

The reason for the collapse of the Congress of the People is that Prakash Ramadhar has never been able to explain his position regarding the People's Partnership to the membership of the COP, long fed up of the abuse met out to them by the lead party in the partnership, the United National Congress. And were it not for the selfish, me first, eat ah food culture so easily exemplified by the UNC and its members, if the Partnership were for a moment the all inclusive love fest it is portrayed to be, none of these problems that are dogging them now and that may well cost them the election would be happening.

Why? Because believe it or not, the same UNC that can pull twenty, thirty, forty thousand in Brazil, Oropouche and even Chaguanas West would have the hardest of times pulling one tenth of that number in Tunapuna, and St. Augustine, and one hundredth of it in any of the three Diego Martins. The fact is the UNC has never been able to travel well, and needed the COP to pull it along outside of its sixteen traditional seats. And now, like the scorpion who is drowning because he stung the frog that was giving him a ride across the river due to his innate nature, the UNC has killed the golden goose that could have given them a second term in office.

So what now? Well, nothing really. I mean, our politics is nothing if not devious and two faced and the voting public have long been proponents of the maxim 'yesterday was yesterday, today is today' even if they didn't know it before Jack Warner told them, but the fact of the matter is that if Keith Rowley were to cross the floor tomorrow and express his love for Kamla, the yellow shirt wearing, kool aid drinking, sycophantic front lines of the UNC would embrace him lovingly as a lost son coming home, the same Keith Rowley they are demonizing today. And vice versa. That the same Jack Warner was greeted like a comrade in arms by the same PNM that marched repeatedly against him personally, who declared his presence in the Parliament an affront to ethics and good governance, is nothing but more evidence of this, and should Anand Ramlogan and Anil Roberts resurface in red shirts tomorrow waving a balisier, the PNM rank and file would claim them as their own.

No the problem is of course the broken systems that make conspirators and pilferers of us all. We are to blame, but not solely and on our own. This is what we inherited, and without real motivation to change the ease with which crime is committed and excused in this country, this is who we have accepted ourselves as being. This is who we will be until Kingdom come, and the disenchantment in the COP was not so much about what the UNC was getting away with, but that they weren't sharing. All of the walking in the rain without getting wet nonsense was just theatre, was just play acting to the voters to give us a bligh, and had the UNC the sense they rode in to government on they would have easily played 'one for you and one for me' with the COP and lived in office forever, or at least as long as it took the PNM to realize that their leader was what was keeping them from being elected.

The last of the Mohicans Keith Rowley, he who occupies the same mental space as Jack Warner and Anand Ramlogan in the minds of the voters, he is now left like the cheese standing alone, and in full glare and without the counterbalance of the rest of the trio of 'despicability' he is left to take the brunt of public revulsion all alone.

No Prakash Ramadhar has failed to secure his place in history simply because he mistook his greed for power, spotlight and perks as his afflictions alone. Had he dared to look back among the ranks of the party of integrity and saw the salivating at the promise of political power he would have negotiated better with his UNC handlers and shared the wealth. As it is, he and they have failed to keep the few COP die hards who might have pulled the floating voters along for the ride one more time happy and well fed, and this, more than anything else is why the COP and by extension the People's Partnership is dying today. Greed. And the inability to share the spoils of office.