Gail Alexan­der

If the fash­ion po­lice are–still–look­ing for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's red Bal­isi­er shirt, he didn't seem par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried on Wednes­day night. Nor did he ap­pear to be har­bour­ing wor­ries about what his for­mer min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley might say to the pub­lic 24 hours lat­er when Row­ley held his first pub­lic meet­ing at Diego Mar­tin last night. But Row­ley was clear­ly on Man­ning's mind when he ad­dressed PN­Mites in Ari­ma on Wednes­day night, ahead of Row­ley's launch. Play­ing to a car park which was red with PNM T-shirts (in most places), Man­ning, how­ev­er, had UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her forces up­per­most in mind from the start of his ad­dress.

Sig­mund Freud may have had his own rea­son­ing on the is­sue, but Man­ning got a laugh from the au­di­ence when he de­cid­ed to sav­age the UNC's "We will Rise" slo­gan with a cer­tain com­par­i­son: "It sounds to me like an ad­ver­tise­ment for Vi­a­gra," Man­ning de­clared, quip­ping that his sis­ter, a psy­chi­a­trist, may be much need­ed in the op­po­si­tion coali­tion al­so. His more se­ri­ous state­ments thrust straight in­to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ty and a false­ness, he said, he per­ceived on her part via her new style of speech. "Nyshun... (na­tion)." Man­ning re­mind­ed the laugh­ing crowd. At­tempt­ing to il­lus­tate her un­pre­pared­ness for prime min­is­ter-ship, Man­ning harked back at pre­vi­ous lead­ers and their own state.

His treat­ment at the hands of the NAR Gov­ern­ment as Op­po­si­tion Leader of a dev­as­tat­ed PNM must have ran­kled deeply since Man­ning said the NAR min­is­ters were "mer­ci­less" in their at­tacks on him. There, he brought Row­ley–and for­mer min­is­ter Ken Val­ley–in­to the pic­ture, re­call­ing how PNM strug­gled to re­build post-NAR and how Row­ley made cer­tain his­toric re­marks to groups PNM sought to lob­by then. His voice hav­ing re­cov­ered from last Sun­day's hoarsness at Wood­ford Square, Man­ning re­count­ed the four-day trip to sev­er­al South Amer­i­can coun­tries he took last April to pre­pare for the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit. "When I re­turned I had to rest for 24 hours, I was shak­ing from over­work," Man­ning added. Al­though Man­ning con­fi­dent­ly dis­missed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship po­ten­tial, pre­ced­ing PNM speak­ers all held a com­mon theme of urg­ing mem­bers to cam­paign.

"All hands on deck! Do what­ev­er is re­quest­ed of you. We must not al­low this to fall," chair­man Ralph Maraj com­mand­ed. "Do not play with your chil­dren's fu­ture!" can­di­date Nadra Nathai-Gyan warned. "Choose wise­ly how you vote, it should not be left to peo­ple whis­per­ing sweet noth­ings in your ear... this is our plat­form for op­por­tu­ni­ty and we must com­mand it–Ari­ma, we stay­ing PNM!" can­di­date Lau­rel Leza­ma ex­hort­ed. PNM's lat­est ar­se­nal in­clud­ed a re­ply to the Op­po­si­tion's move to ex­ploit re­cent ten­sions be­tween Man­ning and Row­ley, via Par­lia­ment sound­bites and video clips of the two spar­ring. PNM's re­tort was clips of UNC's Su­ruj Ram­bachan "badtalk­ing" Jack Warn­er and the lat­ter do­ing same to Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Still, the Ari­ma PNM meet­ing went on lack­ing the pres­ence on stage of out­go­ing MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les who was back­stage. Beck­les won Ari­ma in the 2007 elec­tion with 8,603 votes com­pared with 1,224 from UNC's Wayne Ro­driguez, 3,464 by COP's Roger Samuel and 82 votes won by Fran­cis Bor­rell, an In­de­pen­dent. There was no re­ply yes­ter­day from Beck­les' di­rec­tion re­gard­ing on whether she would be at Row­ley's launch last night. Val­ley told T&T Guardian yes­ter­day morn­ing he planned to at­tend Row­ley's meet­ing but would not be among speak­ers. "I'm cit­i­zen Ken, man" Val­ley added, de­clin­ing com­ment on the PNM's chal­lenges, Row­ley's po­si­tion and if Row­ley would rise to the oc­ca­sion on PNM's side–or else­where.