Sat Ma­haraj

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) cel­e­brat­ed its first an­niver­sary in gov­ern­ment in grand style on the night of May 24. It was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone that de­served to be cel­e­brat­ed as it showed the naysay­ers that the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led coali­tion of the will­ing had the stay­ing pow­er and re­solve to hold on to gov­ern­ment. Many had pre­dict­ed that the par­ties of dis­parate in­ter­ests and fac­tions that made up the coali­tion lacked the ide­o­log­i­cal co­he­sive­ness to hold on to pow­er for more than six months. They were proven wrong. The an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion was ad­ver­tised in the mass me­dia but not to the ex­tent that it could be in­ter­pret­ed as po­lit­i­cal tri­umphal­ism of the coali­tion over the de­feat­ed Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move- ment (PNM). It is un­der­stand­able as the PP strate­gists view the cleav­ages with­in the Op­po­si­tion PNM as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make in­roads in­to the par­ty's dwin­dling sup­port base.

The PP strate­gists no doubt are aware that the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion did not see a sig­nif­i­cant enough move­ment or ero­sion of the PNM po­lit­i­cal sup­port. In­stead, the PP won of­fice by at­tract­ing new vot­ers and con­soli- dat­ing its own dis­en­chant­ed sup­port base. Af­ter the shine of new­ness of gov­er­nance wears off and the un­rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tion of over-night change, it is un­clear if these vot­ers will be will­ing to re­turn to the polls to once again vote for the PP. For these vot­ers it was im­por­tant that the PP reaf­firms its ad­her­ence to the prin­ci­ples on which the sep­a­rate par­ties mo­bilised their re­spec­tive sup­port­ers. Word among the PP faith­ful on the an­niver­sary date was that you had to be there ear­ly as there was an­tic­i­pa­tion that the crowd would be over­whelm­ing and traf­fic would cre­ate an im­pass­able bot­tle neck. This proved to be ex­act­ly what un­fold­ed that cel­e­bra­to­ry night.

Peo­ple be­gan ar­riv­ing at the Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas, venue in their hun­dreds from as ear­ly as 5 pm. Walk­ing among the crowd lat­er as the af­ter­noon pro­gressed, it was ob­vi­ous that not all in at­ten­dance were sup­port­ers of the PP Gov­ern­ment. A sup­port­er shar­ing self-fi­nanced fly­ers pro­mot­ing the var­i­ous achieve­ments of the PP Gov­ern­ment was met with mixed re­ac­tion. The faith­ful re­spond­ed pos­i­tive­ly, want­i­ng more of the fly­ers, while there were those who were ask­ing if this was all they were get­ting as they ex­pect­ed jobs and not pa­per. The "par­ty in pow­er" draws its mem­ber­ship from all so­cio-eco­nom­ic groups and they came out to iden­ti­fy and be seen by the lead­er­ship to en­sure that their at­tempts to se­cure a job or con­tract in fu­ture would be en­hanced.

While the crowd was build­ing, some Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment were in a near­by Chi­nese restau­rant which served as a meet­ing place. The MPs took this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the past year, the suc­cess­es and fail­ures. At about the sched­uled start time, the MPs slow­ly made their way across to the main stage where they re­main seat­ed for the rest of the evening. The cel­e­bra­tions be­gan with the usu­al en­ter­tain­ment to get the crowd in the mood. One ob­serv­er not­ed that with the ex­cep­tion of Nigel Ro­jas of Or­ange Sky, the per­form­ers of the elec­toral cam­paign were ab­sent from the en­ter­tain­ment stage. Nowhere to be found were Crazy or M'Ba, among oth­ers. Per­cy Vil­lafana, how­ev­er, was most present. The man who in­spired the "Do So" cam­paign slo­gan was to be found ini­tial­ly in the VIP tent and then lat­er on the main stage it­self.

The PP recog­nised that this east-west cor­ri­dor pen­sion­er, when he re­fused then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning en­try to his premis­es, had in­spired a na­tion and con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the elec­toral vic­to­ry in a sym­bol­ic way with which thou­sands iden­ti­fied. When the main event be­gan fol­low­ing the en­ter­tain­ment, the crowd was es­ti­mat­ed at some 25,000 strong. The crowd grew larg­er as peo­ple even­tu­al­ly es­caped from the traf­fic in­to Cha-gua­nas and to the Mid Cen­tre Mall venue. The speak­ers rep­re­sent­ed the lead­er­ship of the PP coali­tion. They cel­e­brat­ed de­spite a year of grow­ing pains as they each found their re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal space in this new arrange­ment. The coali­tion held tough. Each leader from the com­po­nent po­lit­i­cal part­ner used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reaf­firm their com­mit­ment to the Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led coali­tion.

They had shown by ex­am­ple the ad­van­tages of a coali­tion gov­ern­ment: that the Gov­ern­ment was more con­sen­sus-based; re­sult­ing poli­cies broad­ly ap­proved of; that the Gov­ern­ment had a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the elec­torate's wish­es, and a bet­ter pol­i­cy of scruti­ny of pol­i­cy de­tail. The Kam­la PP Gov­ern­ment is fur­ther strength­ened by the split now high­light­ed in the PNM op­po­si­tion. The Patrick Man­ning walk from Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do demon­strates to the pop­u­la­tion the "ta­ban­ca" that loss of pow­er can cause. It could even leave a well es­tab­lished par-ty like the PNM in a state of di­vi­sion.

Louis Lee Sing, may­or of Port-of-Spain, ex­pressed the view that Man­ning is lead­ing his few fol­low­ers to the sana­to­ri­um while Man­ning's son hit back by say­ing Lee Sing should re­sign as may­or, that Lee Sing was vir­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed by Man­ning, who lost the ra­dio li­cence case to the Ma­ha Sab­ha af­ter giv­ing Lee Sing a li­cence ahead of us. Our ap­pli­ca­tion was ahead of Lee Sing's.

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha