Monday, August 10 2009

WE were pleased to see another blow dealt to the nonsensical idea being promoted by each faction in the UNC of appointing “surrogate MPs” and “surrogate offices” to service constituents of the rival faction.

The latest blow to this nonsense was dealt to Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday on Thursday when he purported to service the constituents of Chaguanas West MP, Jack Warner, by using the office of Chaguanas Deputy Mayor, Orlando Nagessar, at the Chaguanas Borough Corporation (CBC).

To recap: Panday is upset at a bid to shake his hold on the UNC by Warner who recently showed his power by seeing Natasha Navas replace Suruj Rambachan as Chaguanas Mayor. Claiming Warner has ridden on his coat-tails to office, Panday vowed to become a “surrogate MP” to sideline Warner.

So Panday defied a ban by Navas on the use of council premises for non-council matters, and he went ahead to issue a media statement inviting Chaguanas West constituents to meet him on Thursday at Nagessar’s CBC office.

Pro-Navas Alderman Ramesh Ramdhan said the council had ruled that Panday could visit Nagessar’s office, but could not try to turn the occasion into an MP’s “surgery” to see constituents, otherwise the municipal police would step in.

In return, a defiant Panday had claimed to be “Leader of the Opposition of the whole country” and therefore entitled to meet anyone anywhere, irrespective of constituency borders.

Beforehand, it seemed that in theory it might prove to be hard for municipal police to sift out burgesses legitimately coming to see Nagessar, from Chaguanas West constituents visiting Panday.

However events turned out to be anti-climactic.

Panday duly arrived and spent a couple of hours in a visit that despite all the hype beforehand, turned out to be “surprisingly low-key and incident-free” according to the Newsday story.

In fact, the turnout of persons coming to visit Mr Panday was reportedly minuscule, in the two hours that the Newsday reporter was present.

Newsday reported claims by Nagessar that 40 people visited Panday, but Newsday saw no evidence of such numbers, but rather just a mere handful of visitors.

Further, we just don’t see how Mr Panday could possibly consult 40 persons in a period of 120 minutes, which we see as mathematically impossible.

Newsday reported: “At any given time, there only seemed to be one or two persons milling around the office to see Panday. These constituents/burgesses were hugely outnumbered at any given time by the 14 media personnel on duty, and by the clusters of curious council workers standing outside in the road.”

So while no one had expected Mr Panday to walk with a tassa side to herald his visit, nevertheless it seems to us that the constituents of Chaguanas West did not take up his offer to represent them in place of Warner. It was a damp squib for Mr Panday.

While Mr Panday regaled media personnel and went through the motions of serving as a surrogate MP, plainly the voters of Chaguanas West, of their own accord, stayed away.

Following our previous editorial decrying anyone purporting to act as a surrogate MP inside the House of Representatives, we are now glad to see that this fanciful idea of surrogacy has also been rejected by the very constituents themselves.