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Dead Zone
Posted: Saturday, January 19, 2002
By Donna Yawching
THERE'S an interesting thing about our court system: it is the most effective route imaginable to total self-marginalisation. It's a kind of dead zone: once you enter it, you drop off the radar, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. The general public may be mildly curious about the final result; but supremely uninterested in the actual process. It is, to use a famous (and as it happens, appropriate) quote, a case of "Wake me up when it's over."
This thought occurred to me recently when I heard Basdeo Panday (he of the famous quote) say that the UNC would be going to court to argue the illegality and unconstitutional nature of Patrick Manning's government. As soon as Panday uttered those words, I suspect that the UNC ceased to exist for much of the population. All of a sudden, it no longer feels like a political entity to be taken seriously: it's just a bunch of cranks huffing and puffing about arcane matters in an abstract forum.
The same thing, to a lesser extent, happened to the PNM a year ago, when it was forced to make the Gypsy/Chaitan matter a legal issue. In actual fact, it shouldn't have had to–a political party should not be obliged to prove the legality or illegality of a particular candidate. That is a watchdog function that by rights should fall under the aegis of the body in charge of the election, in this case the EBC. But the EBC–for whatever reason–abdicated its responsibility, preferring (for whatever reason) to overlook the irrefutable fact of two candidates signing an inaccurate declaration. If the PNM had not pursued its petition, the whole affair would simply have been swept under the carpet, with the two candidates gaining legitimacy by default.
The PNM, therefore, had no choice in the matter; and it's a pity that the petition was not allowed to proceed to its dénouement. But the interesting thing is that, as soon as the party launched its petition, this became a tacit admission of defeat, as far as its immediate claim to power was concerned. The population exhaled. Clearly, the petition would take a long time to wend its way through the legalistic tangle, and meanwhile, the status quo would hold: the UNC was the government, legitimate or not.
At that point, the PNM did not quite drop off the radar screen, for two reasons: (1) the party's longevity has made it a fixture in the national consciousness; and (2) even as it launched its legal battle, the party accepted its role as Opposition, and therefore continued to have a valid part to play in the country's business.
The UNC, however, has rejected this role, and therefore ends up as nothing. If you're not the Government and you're not the Opposition, then what are you? Just an irritating background noise, trying the patience of the populace. Have they not noticed the deafening silence, even from their natural constituencies? People cannot get excited, no matter how much Mr Panday froths at the mouth, at a bunch of whining has-beens who are hoping that some judge, somewhere, will put them back in power. It's all getting a bit pathetic.
There are several ironies at work here. The first is that, as nebulous as the court system may appear to the man-on-the-street, it does, ultimately, wield the power to make itself felt. Mr Manning discovered this some years ago, when he went to court on a constitutional matter, and lost. The actual issue (having to do with MPs crossing the floor) is by now shrouded in indifference: no one really cares what Manning was fighting for, or what it means to the governance of the country. Dead zone. All we remember is that he was ordered to fork out a million dollars, and that he's still trying to cough it up.
The other irony of, course, is that a year ago, when the PNM launched its Gypsy/Chaitan battle–one which the UNC could quite credibly have lost, had it run its natural course–Mr Panday's battle cry was that the nation would never stand for a government that had been installed by the courts. Today, that's exactly what he's hoping for: a return to power via a court declaration that the current regime is illegal. Plus ça change. Does Panday expect that the same electorate will accept a court-mandated UNC government, just because it is UNC? Someone should check this man for hallucinatory substances.
As if all this were not bad enough, the UNC is planning to take its legal struggle to even more rarified levels of abstractness: not only does it plan to argue that the PNM government is illegal and unconstitutional, but that every decision the current regime takes is also illegal and unconstitutional.
This is very airy-fairy stuff, but with potentially explosive consequences. By the time the case is decided, the PNM will have made countless decisions, both large and small; can you even imagine the can of worms that would be opened, in the (unlikely) event of the UNC winning the case? How does one reverse or rectify all the decisions and actions taken by an incumbent government? Would the UNC sue the PNM over each one? Stand up and wave goodbye to millions of taxpayers' dollars.
The populace is being subjected to all this silliness for one miserable reason: the UNC wants to get back in power so badly that it literally hurts. The greatest irony, though, is that in taking this particular route to stake its claim, the party is becoming more and more unreal. It's getting hard to even remember their names and faces, far less what they're supposed to be "Ministers" of. The Invisible Men Lost In The Twilight Zone. Maybe they should consider television.
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