Gail Alexan­der

When Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning ap­peared in the House of Rep­re­sen- tatives to dis­cuss lo­cal gov­ern­ment mat­ters sev­er­al weeks ago, a third of the Op­po­si­tion was ab­sent. (As was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, then in Lon­don.) Yes­ter­day, when Mrs Man­ning re­turned to the House to present draft lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form plans, key front­line min­is­ters com­pris­ing a size­able chunk of the Cab­i­net were over­seas. (In­clud­ing Je­re­mie, again in Lon­don.)

PNM's 13-mem­ber front bench was down to sev­en in­clud­ing Mrs Man­ning, a sen­a­tor. PNM's back benchers were in the ma­jor­i­ty yes­ter­day. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon are in Guyana

Fi­nance Min­is­ters Karen Tesheira and Mar­i­ano Browne are in Chile and Guyana re­spec­tive­ly. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Emi­ly Dick- Ford is al­so in Chile. Sci­ence/ Tech­nol­o­gy Min­is­ter Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo is in France, and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Con­rad Enill is in Qatar. The full Op­po­si­tion front bench, yawn­ing its way through Man­ning's ad­dress, came awake when de­bate on the plan was an­nounced for Mon­day. A flat (and shout­ed) "No!" from the UNC. "...In­suf­fi­cient time to study the doc­u­ment," UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day de­clared, ob­vi­ous­ly hav­ing glanced at the plan and not­ed pro­pos­als that would change cer­tain UNC-held cor­po­ra­tions. Whether Mon­day's de­bate–a week away from the end of the cor­po­ra­tions' term–may be an­oth­er step to­wards polls or to­wards a fourth year-long ex­ten­sion re­mains to be seen.

De­spite UNC MP Kelvin Ram­nath's dis­cour­age­ment ("You wast­ed the time of the House"), Man­ning fared slight­ly bet­ter than her col­league, Sports Min­is­ter Gary Hunt, did in the Sen­ate on Tues­day. Hunt turned up to apol­o­gise for an 18-week de­lay in an­swer­ing a ques­tion on the sta­tus/cur­rent cost/over­all cost/com­ple­tion date of the Lara Sta­di­um. Tabled since Jan­u­ary, it was one of 26 ques­tions on the Sen­ate agen­da of which on­ly sev­en were an­swered. To UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark's great con­ster­na­tion. The sit­u­a­tion may have al­so lit­er­al­ly "pained" 73-year-old act­ing Sen­ate leader Lenny Saith, who had to rise–some­what stiffly–19 times to ad­mit Gov­ern­ment's in­abil­i­ty to an­swer. Hunt plead­ed "dif­fi­cul­ty" in col­lat­ing in­for­ma­tion on the sta­di­um. How­ev­er, 40 miles away that af­ter­noon, Hunt's boss ap­peared to have had no dif­fi­cul­ty in as­cer­tain­ing that the long over­due project "should be ready in time for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment" (sic) meet­ing in No­vem­ber. A fact PM Man­ning shared when he vis­it­ed San Fer­nan­do Girls Gov­ern­ment school that day.

Man­ning was al­so in­formed enough to know the sta­di­um would be launched with a "fete." But tem­po­rary dis­con­nec­tion may be a haz­ard of the job of hefty Gov­ern­ment sched­ules. In­deed, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Tesheira would have al­so pro­voked any amount of spec­u­la­tion about Freudi­an slips at Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing when she seemed for a split sec­ond to for­get what her job was. Re­ply­ing on a tourism ques­tion, Tesheira said she "was not the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance...sor­ry, the Min­is­ter of Tourism" (sic). Si­mul­ta­ne­ous with her stat­ed ap­pre­hen­sion about the slip-up be­com­ing a head­line came a re­minder from her col­league Colm Im­bert on her re­al ti­tle.

'Con­ser­v­a­tive ap­proach?'

Tesheira's hint that Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue a "con­ser­v­a­tive" ap­proach for 2010 is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing con­sid­er­ing its over- am­bi­tious 2009 bud­get and oil price peg­ging which caused that pack­age to be trimmed sev­er­al months af­ter de­liv­ery when the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis hit. Her col­league Browne's re­fusal to dis­cuss tax re­lief mea­sures or VAT re­moval in the Sen­ate on Tues­day–on the grounds of be­ing bud­get is­sues–will al­so perk in­ter­est on whether these will form part of the next bud­get's mea­sures to deal with job loss ef­fects. Gov­ern­ment sources, not­ing im­pend­ing com­ple­tion of cer­tain projects, hint­ed yes­ter­day the up­com­ing pack­age "should not ex­ceed" the $50b bud­get of 2009.

This how­ev­er must al­so be con­sid­ered against ex­pect­ed projects such as six high­ways and oth­er ini­tia­tives Man­ning re­cent­ly men­tioned, and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's (in­creased) re­quest for $3.7 bil­lion. Bud­get ex­pen­di­ture is ex­pect­ed on mea­sures to com­bat the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and se­cu­ri­ty–pri­or­i­ty themes at Cari­com's sum­mit and ex­pect­ed to be the linch­pin of re­gion­al gov­ern­ments' 2010 fi­nan­cial fo­cus. Ob­vi­ous­ly so in T&T's case fol­low­ing a year of "belt tight­en­ing" and ris­ing mur­der rates. Be­tween 2003 and 2009, when Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion bud­gets moved from $20 bil­lion to $50 bil­lion re­spec­tive­ly, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty's al­lo­ca­tion rose cor­re­spond- in­g­ly from $1.7b in 2003 to $4.7b in 2009. While the am­bi­tious start to re­coup pub­lic trust via this week's Beetham lock­down will fos­ter high ex­pec­ta­tions of con­sis­tent ex­er­cis­es, a lapse will on­ly re­duce the crack­down to PR val­ue and fur­ther dis­trust.

And at the rate Man­ning's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil has been de­lib­er­at­ing up­on the Ross se­cu­ri­ty plan, it may well form the 2010 bud­get's high­light, if not re­vealed be­fore. While Man­ning's le­gal ad­vis­er, Je­re­mie, has shrugged off no-con­fi­dence po­si­tions against him, he may have more than that to deal with on his re­turn. Re­vamp­ing of Je­re­mie's an­ti-cor­rup­tion thrust is tak­ing place, it was con­firmed. Foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Bob Lindquist–track­ing the Cleaver Heights is­sue and CL Fi­nan­cial's op­er­a­tions–and the DPP were seen en­ter­ing Je­re­mie's of­fice on Thurs­day. (Je­re­mie's pre­de­ces­sor, Brigitte An­nisette-George, re-emerg­ing, at­tend­ed a Grena­di­an High Com­mis­sion func­tion last week.)

Bas does bud­get

While the Op­po­si­tion has yet to quell its own in­ter­nal "dis­con­nec­tions" and con­tend with COP's cold shoul­der, Pan­day may still be heart­ened by UNC/COP uni­ty of sorts when some of his MPs re­port­ed­ly vot­ed with COP mem­bers in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion's no- con­fi­dence mo­tion against Je­re­mie. Pan­day says he will de­liv­er the Op­po­si­tion's bud­get re­ply for the first time since 2006, "Once I'm alive and well." Pan­day was un­able to present replies since 2006 due to le­gal mat­ters and his re­cent sus­pen­sion from Par­lia­ment. Fol­low­ing his de­ci­sion to boy­cott gov­ern­ment func­tions this week, Pan­day has not said whether this has less to do with protest­ing against AG Je­re­mie and the Pres­i­dent–as he claimed–than the fact that Warn­er "out­ed" him re­cent­ly when Pan­day at­tend­ed a func­tion with Min­is­ter Tesheira. This was af­ter Pan­day ac­cused Warn­er of PNM-con­sort­ing when Warn­er at­tend­ed a func­tion with the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter.