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BASDEO PANDAY – IS THE ENIGMA ANSWERED?
The first volume of spee
ches by Basdeo Panday is titled An Enigma Answered.
The dictionaries tell us enigma means:
– a person, thing or situation that is mysterious and difficult to understand synonym mystery, puzzle. Even after years he still remains an enigma to me.
“1: something hard to understand or explain
2: an inscrutable or mysterious person”.
In death as in life, Basdeo Panday, remains a person and personality not easily understood.
From some of the comments I have heard and read since his passing, there are those who are puzzled by him and there are those who are determined to impose their own partisan political definitions on him, his personality and role in the history and politics of our country.
For the exploited worker in the urban factories, visiting the home of a rural sugar worker and seeing his picture in a place of reverence next to those of their religious deities would have been puzzling.
After all, the wage increase he led them to win was not much in monetary terms but as a percentage it was of the order of 100%.
It would have been puzzling if one did not understand what the remnant of the sugar field task work left over from slavery and Indentureship meant.
As it would have been puzzling if one did not understand that the wresting of the leadership of that union was an act of liberation as significant as the leadership of Butler, Rienzi and others to legalisation of trade unions was to the workers in the oilfields and other workplaces.
Basdeo Panday was at leadership level of 2 administrations that enjoyed special majorities so large that they could have changed anything in the Constitution, yet he had to spend most of his post Government officeholding life arguing for ‘fundamental Constitutional change’.
That remains a puzzle of his enigmatic political life.
As Prime Minister in the 90s he introduced the inclusion of trade union representatives on the boards of state enterprises and Statutory organizations which was a watchdog step against corruption in some of them (certainly in WASA and NIPDEC where I was privileged to serve on behalf of NATUC and the PSA).
By contrast, the Piarco ‘feeding trough’, the repercussions of which are still with us today, also is a product of his time in office.
He gave us Spiritual Baptist Liberation Day and succeeded in carrying out the death penalty for murder.
The then president of Cuba, Fidel Castro (left), and Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Basdeo Panday, at the closing of a special meeting of Cariforum on August 17, 1998 in Santo Domingo (Roberto Schmidt)
But, in true enigmatic style, his legacy includes the dubious distinction of being the only politician to be jailed on corruption charges ìn our post-Independence Era.
He was a revered labour union leader and fighter for workers’ Rights yet he amended the Summary Offences Act to make organizing protest marches more difficult and joined with the then Government to create the worst mess in the management of the Police Service with amendments of the Constitution and Acts the deleterious effects of which we feel today.
We have to ask has the enigma of the ‘Silver Fox’, the ‘Boss’ really been answered?
Or is it the case that ‘Even after years he still remains an enigma to us’?
Rest in Peace Bas.
Condolences to your family, loved ones, supporters and those who will continue to try and define you for their own nefarious ends.
Here is the first address to the nation by Prime Minister Basdeo Panday in 1995:
https://youtu.be/vSeToTR6OlE?si=9bmYDQM6TAruQxpg.
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Respecting History and
Fighting for Democratic Renewal of our
Electoral and Political Systems
3 January 2024