Yvonne Ba­boolal

The In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) will soon whith­er away and the pop­u­la­tion is bored, weary, cyn­i­cal and stressed out with elec­tions and call­ing one be­fore 2015 is a fool­ish idea, says po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Sel­wyn Ryan.He made the claims yes­ter­day at a po­lit­i­cal fo­rum at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), as he ad­vised the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to shut up about it and put its house in or­der first.

"I don't think an ear­ly elec­tion, im­me­di­ate­ly or very soon, is a good idea. It's a hare­brained idea. I don't think we should en­ter­tain it," Ryan told the gath­er­ing, which in­clud­ed stu­dents from the cam­pus, sup­port­ers of the dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ties, po­lit­i­cal ob­servers and even a Eu­ro­pean Union rep­re­sen­ta­tive."To the PNM, put your house in or­der to mo­bilise and don't go off on a tan­gent talk­ing about elec­tions," he added.

Ryan sat at a head ta­ble in­side the Noor Has­sanali Au­di­to­ri­um, along­side Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, PNM PRO Faris al-Rawi and In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) deputy leader Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit.Since the PNM's win in the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions and the No­vem­ber 4 St Joseph by-elec­tion, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to call an ear­ly elec­tion. The gen­er­al elec­tion is due in 2015.

Ryan al­so spent a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of his speak­ing time giv­ing frank views about the ILP and its leader Jack Warn­er."The new par­ty's shrub­bery which was green is be­gin­ning to turn brown. My po­lit­i­cal sense tells me the move­ment is los­ing mo­men­tum. I don't have Jack's cheque book but I have a feel­ing it's be­gin­ning to evap­o­rate."Ryan said he thought the ILP was a vic­tim of ear­ly suc­cess and said what hap­pened over the last few months was "an ac­ci­dent."