PNM no more ready than anybody
Andy Johnson
Trinidad Express
Sunday, September 30th 2007
DAMNED if he didn't and dammed, now that he has. That's the dilemma, on the horns of which the Prime Minister rode into the last sitting of the Parliament on Friday, and later walked out from.
After 21 months of threats, titillation and mamaguy, Mr Manning announced in the House of Representatives on Friday that the date for general election would be Monday, November 5.
Right away, it angered a section of the country, this being four days before the Hindu holy day of Divali. So that after all this planning and teasing, strategising, testing and preparing, he walked right into another self-created ethno-religious storm. From the man who said months ago that race relations could be the number one problem in the country and that he was committed to finding ways of addressing them.
In explaining the reasoning behind choosing the date, the Prime Minister told reporters on Friday it was a subject that had been discussed extensively. He said this date, "had been determined a long time ago."
Well exactly how long is a long time ago. And why then unsettle the country with talk two years ago that it was going to come like a thief in the night. Perhaps the country is owed an explanation of what may have been the value for national development of politicking such as that.
Further, he said the matter was the subject of some measure of discussions. "There were some who felt that it should not be held on Divali day, but that it would be alright to be held during the period of fasting." There were, significantly, "different views on the matter," he said.
What these disclosures have also dispersed, is the other myth that the choosing of an election date is the sole preserve of the person in Whitehall. They run contrary to those notions which the country has been encouraged to cultivate. They say also that the Prime Minister was not, in fact, as terrified about discussing this national secret as the country was led to believe after the polls in 1995. Then we were told that the PNM lost government principally because someone leaked the date to the opposition.
Generally also, the state of national anxiety over the election date issue has generated a new consensus. What it has done more than anything else is to galvanise public opinion as never before, behind a point of view that the business of holding elections ought to be much more of a fixed arrangement than it is now.
It has significantly upped the ante on the question, raised after the general election of 2001, that the country is in desperate need of constitutional reform.
Six years have passed and the country is plunged into another election campaign, in fact it has been there for at least the last nine months effectively, with the constitution in the same battered and bruised shape. And with major developments taking place over this period, things have got worse on the question.
A judgment in the impeachment matter against the Chief Justice expected within the next five weeks, just heightens this sense of awareness.
Say what they will, the supporters of the PNM remain scandalised by the turmoil in the party over the feuding at the screening. No decisions were made, the Prime Minister told reporters following the ugly scenes outside Balisier House Thursday night. Valley, Hinds and Eddie Hart are still in the rain. For what no one really knows, or accepts.
The Prime Minister discounts the protests and the protesters. Those who came and caused a ruction don't add up to critical mass. He flung their discontent back into their faces. Processes in the party don't allow for action of that sort, he said disapprovingly.
Among that number, however, are to be counted the party's ground troops, the canvassers, the volunteer brigade.
Particularly in Diego Martin Central and in parts of east Port of Spain, the COP surge is palpable, but not palatable to those in command. Mutiny is being fomented in many of those shouting, aggravated minds who sneered at Martin Joseph's appeals for calm. They rejected his attempt to clothe himself in the authority of the party's General Secretary.
On the Tobago side, the boat is being rocked heavily as well. The outgoing Eudine Job-Davis complains publicly about "manipulation" of the nominations process and a coalition of forces has risen up to fight the PNM as a single objective. A huge question mark exists, however, as to whether the principals can pull together in time to move the mass with them.
But after six years, Tobago's return to the balisier is up for re-evaluation.
Into the next five weeks we go charging then. But here even with the power of incumbency and all the advantages flowing from that, including its own self-serving agenda setting for the elections, the governing party appears no more ready for the polls than any of its challengers.
