Tony Fras­er

Per­haps it was sim­ply a case that the PNM par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who dis­obeyed the de­ci­sion of the par­ty cau­cus to ab­stain from vot­ing in the Man­ning mo­tion could not com­plete­ly aban­don their for­mer leader, per­haps still psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly their leader. On their faces a look that they could not just leave their for­mer prime min­is­ter to be a laugh­ing stock. In fact, even among those who fol­lowed the par­ty line and "ab­stained," a cou­ple seemed pained by hav­ing to em­bar­rass their for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader in pub­lic, in front a mock­ing gov­ern­ment bench and a na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, large sec­tions of the lat­ter still jeer­ing at a man even as he at­tempts to prospect for a nugget from his past life of glo­ry. The sen­ti­men­tal stir­rings of loy­al­ty came notwith­stand­ing the re­al­i­ty of a Patrick Man­ning still suf­fer­ing from that vain­glo­ri­ous sense of be­ing an ex­alt­ed one guid­ed by an almighty force. The most se­nior PNM politi­co still in the fray, Fer­die Fer­reira, likened Man­ning to the great Cas­sius Clay and oth­er punch-drunk fight­ers at­tempt­ing to re­turn for one last blaze of glo­ry.

How Man­ning must have yearned for his at­tor­ney to have been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tri­umph over a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate which had so pa­rad­ed against him just short of a year ago when he fool­ish­ly, or per­haps he would say through di­vine guid­ance, called an elec­tion which po­lit­i­cal log­ic de­ter­mined his par­ty could nev­er have won. Af­ter the vote and bare­ly able to con­ceal her de­light, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that the Op­po­si­tion had col­lapsed. In a won­der­ful mo­ment of po­lit­i­cal mis­chief, Per­sad-Bis-ses­sar gave a flash of that charm­ing smile to say that while the dooms­day prophets have been say­ing that it is mere­ly a mat­ter of time for her ever-so-of­ten un­ruly and er­rat­ic par­ty to splin­ter in­to the dust, here she was wit­ness­ing the mighty PNM crack­ing un­der strain while her par­ty grows in sol­i­dar­i­ty. You have to con­cede her that mo­ment of po­lit­i­cal bliss, she so of­ten hav­ing come un­der heavy pres­sure be­cause of the chal­lenge of hold­ing to­geth­er her "pick-up side."

In the de­bate be­fore the vote, the right­eous Jus­tice Min­is­ter had rolled thun­der up­on Man­ning, in­vok­ing, in his lord and mighty man­ner, the ac­cept­ed prac­tice of Par­lia­ment hav­ing and re­tain­ing the pow­er to or­der its busi­ness and not al­low for "strangers" to in­ter­vene. While it must be eas­i­ly ac­knowl­edged that the prin­ci­ple of par­lia­men­tary su­prema­cy rules in our times (a prin­ci­ple that Man­ning would cer­tain­ly have up­held in his glo­ry days as em­per­or), it is one which must be chal­lenged and de­bat­ed. It must be raised and de­bat­ed when se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form is en­gaged. Politi­cians here, in the re­gion and all around the world have demon­strat­ed why they can­not be trust­ed with to­tal pow­er. It is clear that giv­en this dis­trust (ob­serve that dis­il­lu­sion­ment world­wide-po­lit­i­cal protests and up­heavals) oc­ca­sioned by the ac­tions of politi­cians, the need is to up­date, per­haps even com­plete­ly trans­form, 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry Eu­ro­pean po­lit­i­cal thought and phi­los­o­phy as they have to do with the need for qual­i­ty and in­ter­ac­tive gov­er­nance in the 21st cen­tu­ry. No longer are pop­u­la­tions in many parts of the world pre­pared to elect politi­cians and al­low them free reign to ex­er­cise com­plete and di­rect pow­er. But that is­sue will be ex­ten­sive­ly en­gaged when we be-gin dis­cus­sion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

On Fri­day, the for­mer all pow­er­ful one, now dis­graced gov­er­nor, walked away from the Par­lia­ment, no clash of cym­bals and drum rolls to mark his ex­it; but per­haps he con­tin­ues to hear the sound­ing bu­gle. It is most as­sured­ly a dif­fi­cult psy­cho­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion for po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to make when they have fall­en so hard to the earth from their glo­ry. It took Pan­day years be­fore he could face the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with­out his scowl­ing si­lence af­ter an elec­tion he did not loose, but nonethe­less was forced in­to giv-ing up gov­er­nor­ship when called up­on to do so by Pres­i­dent Robin­son. For years Pan­day had to strug­gle with that re­moval, on­ly to suf­fer what he must con­sid­er the ul­ti­mate in­dig­ni­ty of los­ing his po­lit­i­cal throne in the par­ty he built to his once po­lit­i­cal un­der­ling. How of­ten had he crushed her un­der­foot, per­haps so much so that it be­came his un­do­ing. Even­tu­al­ly she mus­tered the courage to wipe away her tears and rise to the urg­ings of Broth­er Bob: "Dry your tears I say. No woman, no cry." But all of this mus­ing and hav­ing some se­ri­ous fun with politi­cians apart, Man­ning's lit­tle cha- rade, re­sult­ing from his re­fusal to obey the par­ty whip, the split­ting of the vote clear­ly demon­strates the dif­fi­cul­ty Kei­th Row­ley, loved by seg­ments of the PNM clan but clear­ly not uni­ver­sal­ly giv­en the man­tle, is hav­ing with at­tempt­ing to re­con­struct the par­ty of Dr Williams.

Row­ley must know that re­con­struc­tion and not a mere coat of paint on the cracked and struc­tural­ly in­se­cure PNM in­fra­struc­ture is need­ed if the par­ty is to ever demon­strate the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of once again be­ing able to cap­ture na­tion­al at­ten­tion and imag­i­na­tion. This of course as­sumes that the PP would not dis­in­te­grate in the man­ner of the NAR and hand the gov­ern­ment back to a PNM, even if it is mere­ly cling­ing to its old base. The task ahead for Row­ley's PNM and Per­sad-Bisses­sar's PP is how to build a tru­ly na­tion­al par­ty out of the parts they hold in this frag­ment­ed and un­ruly so­ci­ety. "There is no need for de­struc­tive com­pe­ti­tion and con­flict. All of our in­ter­ests can be served through co-op­er­a­tion and sac­ri­fice. In the end we will all be win­ners," the Prime Min­is­ter plead­ed on the week­end, us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty at a Hanu­man Jayan­ti cel­e­bra­tion at the Di­vali Na­gar site in Ch­agua­nas to speak to the wider plur­al so­ci­ety from her par­ty's Hin­du base. Row­ley has to reach out to oth­er eth­nic­i­ties and cul­tures and make them be­lieve they can achieve a sense of be­long­ing in­side the par­ty. And while it was her day for fun at the PNM's ex­pense, Per­sad-Bisses­sar must know that the PP has an equal­ly dif­fi­cult task. The par­ty has to build a sol­id foun­da­tion and or­gan­ic link among all of the eth­nic­i­ties and so­cial class groups now weak­ly strung to­geth­er.