{"id":2072,"date":"2009-12-16T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T16:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=2072"},"modified":"2010-01-08T09:06:47","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T13:06:47","slug":"making-the-right-choice-for-party-and-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=2072","title":{"rendered":"Making the right choice for party and country"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=2072\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Basdeo Panday, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blogimg\/unc3.jpg\" title=\"Basdeo Panday, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Basdeo Panday, Kamla Persad-Bissessar & Ramesh Maharaj<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><i>By Tony Fraser<br \/>\nDecember 16, 2009<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Ramesh Maharaj is correct in saying that the outcome of the January internal elections of the United National Congress (UNC) will determine the future political prospects of the party. Indeed, to take that projection further along the road of rep-resentative politics, the out come will also determine the short-term political landscape of T&#038;T. It is clear that if the UNC membership returns Basdeo Panday as its political leader, the party will be doomed to opposition. Moreover the UNC, as now configured, is sure to receive an ever-declining share of the number of votes and seats in the local and general elections up ahead.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nEven before Panday\u2019s legal difficulties and his thrashing in the last general election of 2007\u2014both by the PNM and Dookeran\u2019s Congress of the People, that party having been able to steal 148,000 votes from under Panday\u2019s nose (and the qualification is made that not all the 148,000 came from the UNC base)\u2014it was difficult for large clusters of voters from outside the UNC belt to support him as a national leader. That difficulty has been compounded since being tarnished by several yet-to-be-satisfactorily answered actions taken by Panday when he was Prime Minister.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/guardian.co.tt\/commentary\/columnist\/2009\/12\/16\/making-right-choice-party-and-country\" title=\"Making the right choice for party and country\">Full Article : guardian.co.tt<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Tony Fraser December 16, 2009 Ramesh Maharaj is correct in saying that the outcome of the January internal elections of the United National Congress (UNC) will determine the future political prospects of the party. Indeed, to take that projection further along the road of rep-resentative politics, the out come will also determine the short-term &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=2072\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Making the right choice for party and country<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7,142],"tags":[140,147,144,1015,242,1037],"class_list":["post-2072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","category-politics","category-unc","tag-basdeo-panday","tag-jack-warner","tag-kamla-persad-bissessar","tag-politics","tag-ramesh-maharaj","tag-unc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2072"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072\/revisions\/2216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}