’Mr Matthews predicted this development.’ Gideon Hanoomansingh, host of Heritage Radio’s Morning Sunrise show, made the comment to Vasant Bharath as I sat with them on a 90-minute programme as an intruder, ’excited’ as one listener so aptly said. And why should I not be when the perspective I had offered just 24 hours before was not so much prophecy as the manifestation of the power of opinion clearly stated?

That morning the news had broken that the UNC’s disciplinary committee had announced that it would recommend the dismissal of charges against Jack Warner, Ramesh Maharaj and Winston Peters. It was a dramatic development that instantly became the lead story of all the daily papers and news networks including the Caribbean BBC.

UNC vice chairman Vasant Bharath had been promptly summoned to explain the unexpected dénouement by Heritage Radio which had won the right to do so having, just the day before, contemplated that very turn of events on ’Issues and Perspectives-the show that takes you home’.

As a guest on the programme, I had been asked by Hanoomansingh to comment on the fact that Winston Dookeran was being courted by the two factions of the UNC. I thought little of it and said so, for I knew that the internecine warfare has been so damaging that any such posturing to delude the population into believing that the fundamental problems bedevilling the opposition were being addressed would surely breed cynicism.

I then described how a small group from the Tapia community had met on the eve of last Carnival to take stock at the first beat of the drums of renewed warfare after which I had gone to Dookeran with proposals to silence them.

These proposals were that the COP should accept the UNC’s offer of representation in parliament on two conditions. The offer of seats in the senate should be extended to four and should be endorsed by the Ramjack faction and the entire front bench of the opposition. The first was aimed at expanding the representation to include the wider opposition including Tobago and the second to trigger a process for decision-making that could become a convention for the opposition party that was sure to be one of sovereign individuals if not a party of parties.

Dookeran had seemed excited but lacked the political wherewithal and let slip what I thought was a great chance to bring the opposition together in a credible and enduring manner. The consequence today is that he is as much a source of national despair as any of the other combatants.

Knowing that Hanoomansingh was in search of hope I pointed instead to Warner’s declaration that he would run against Basdeo Panday for the post of Political Leader of the UNC as a small window of opportunity to drag the opposition from the quagmire into which it has been mired all year long. I described the declaration as moderate and conciliatory but argued that Panday should seize this opportunity to change the conversation in the UNC from one of character assassination to that of competing visions of the future of the party by encouraging the RamjackG faction to run and by ensuring that the elections were free and fair so that all would accept the results.

When news of the disciplinary committee’s decision broke Heritage Radio was inundated by excited callers who, until then, had been silent on any such possibility. Vasant Bharath reported the mood in party circles was very much the same. Attempting to head off charges that the decision was the result of an orchestration long in the making and to temper expectations while keeping his political leader’s options open, he said that the disciplinary committee was established as an independent body in the context of the party’s operations precisely to avoid bias, adding that it has the power only to recommend to the executive. Bharath added, however, that it would be highly unusual for the executive’s decision not to reflect popular opinion, although Panday has since said that he expects the executive’s decision to reflect uncompromising commitment to party discipline.

Whether the disciplinary committee’s recommendation is the result of orchestration or not, the mere fact of it has transformed the politics in the UNC-if not the entire opposition. The fact that, even after the latest round of purges, there could still be an Abdul willing to face Panday and demand that he steps aside, demonstrates the difficulty Panday faces in assessing the new balance of forces within his ranks. So, too, is the apparently long and winding road between the UNC’s disciplinary committee and the party’s executive.

Uncertainty is the only certainty of the day as Mr. Panday wrestles with temptations of every kind.Of these, two stand out.

The first would be to reject the recommendation of the disciplinary committee and keep out what he has described variously as the rowdy-ism (or is it the Rowley-ism?) of the RamjackG. In this regard he has already done enough baiting to provide the pretext.

The second would be to settle the dispute in the party on grounds chosen by Warner who has repeatedly wrong-footed him.

Both are difficult choices but the ones in between aren’t any easier as Mr. Panday appears hell bent on treating Warner’s conciliatory declaration as a chance for Machiavellian manoeuvring rather than as the opportunity it presents for rescuing the opposition.