Tony Fras­er

?Two years in­to the term (seems much longer giv­en that so much has hap­pened) and af­ter re­sound­ing in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal vic­to­ries in the gen­er­al elec­tion of No­vem­ber 2007, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who at one time seem­ing­ly had the ca­pac­i­ty to "walk on wa­ter," lit­er­al­ly do­ing as he pleased, has be­gun to take stock of his and his par­ty's po­lit­i­cal re­sources.

Per­haps this ear­ly in­tro­spec­tion in the run-up to next year's promised lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls and a full three years be­fore the next gen­er­al elec­tion has been trig­gered by a Mori polls read­ing say­ing that the par­ty/Gov­ern­ment is los­ing ground. Or maybe it is the re­al­i­sa­tion that there is quite an amount of fall­out over the per­ceived less-than-ad­e­quate qual­i­ty of po­lit­i­cal gov­er­nance be­ing of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment. What­ev­er the sources of con­cern im­press­ing them­selves on po­lit­i­cal an­i­mal Man­ning, he is be­com­ing aware of the need to bol­ster his stocks. And this aware­ness comes not-with­stand­ing the pub­lic fa­cade of not be­ing af­fect­ed by pub­lic crit­i­cism; no se­ri­ous and sane po­lit­i­cal leader could ig­nore the quick­ly dis­si­pat­ing po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy that Man­ning and the Gov­ern­ment be­gun the term with. Just to list a few of Man­ning's po­lit­i­cal woes, whether he recog­nis­es or ad­mits to them, there is the po­lit­i­cal fall­out over Ude­cott which has the po­ten­tial to ex­plode in the face of the Prime Min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment, de­pend­ing on the find­ings of the Uff Com­mis­sion and the pub­lic per­cep­tion of those find­ings. �

Then there is the Prime Min­is­ter's (ably as­sist­ed by his Hous­ing Min­is­ter) failed at­tempt to in­dict Kei­th Row­ley for the "way de mon­ey gone" Cleaver Heights con­tract and the re­al­i­ty that Row­ley is not "go­ing qui­et­ly." The loss of cred­i­bil­i­ty of his Fi­nance Min­is­ter on the is­sues of her share­hold­ing in Cli­co and her in­volve­ment in the bailout of the com­pa­ny, added to her quite sim­plis­tic and very mis­lead­ing ar­tic­u­la­tion on the in­ter­na­tion­al econo- mic re­ces­sion and its like­ly im­pact on the lo­cal econ­o­my have tak­en a large wad of the po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy of Man­ning and his Gov­ern­ment. The yet-to-be cred­i­bly and be­liev­ably ex­plained de­par­ture of Brigid An­nisette-George from the po­si­tion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, again leaves Man­ning de­fi­cient with re­gard to his pub­lic pro­nounce­ments on a mat­ter of vi­tal im­por­tance. In­ci­den­tal­ly, the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is yet to be­come aware of how the for­mer AG could have been per­ceived to have been com­pro­mised over the Cli­co/CL Fi­nan­cial af­fair. One source of poor qual­i­ty po­lit­i­cal gov­er­nance which has be­gun to show it­self, but one which will re­al­ly im­pact in the long run, is the in­abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment through its projects to have be­gun in se­ri­ous mea­sure the trans­for­ma­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my.

And this is notwith­stand­ing the fact of the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing spent hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars over the last eight years with lit­tle de­vel­op­ment of the ca­pac­i­ty to sus­tain eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment post the en­er­gy wind­fall. On the is­sue of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic cre­den­tials of the po­lit­i­cal leader and the PNM, those have been se­ri­ous­ly erod­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter's three post­pone­ments of lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions on the most un­ten­able of grounds, ie, that the sys­tem needs to be fixed be­fore the polls are held. In­deed, the post­pone­ments al­so speak of the in­ca­pac­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to ef­fi­cient­ly trans­form the sys­tem. There is too the ques­tion of the in­tegri­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to not be able to hold to its promis­es to hold elec­tions for three years run­ning. On the big one, the Prime Min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment have failed to bring peace and se­cu­ri­ty to the so­ci­ety and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. Over the pe­ri­od of PNM rule, the crim­i­nal cul­ture has deep­ened and spread. Along­side these fail­ures of gov­er­nance must be count­ed the util­i­sa­tion of re­sources on ques­tion- able and grandiose con­struc­tion projects whose util­i­ty and eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty are yet to be ef­fec­tive­ly demon­strat­ed.

Then there are the very ev­i­dent dri­ving per­son­al am­bi­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter, per­haps best demon­strat­ed in the hold­ing of two in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mits at the cost of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars with lit­tle sol­id ra­tio­nale ar­tic­u­lat­ed on how ben­e­fits will ac­crue to the coun­try be­cause of the ex­pen­di­ture. One con­fer­ence has gone and there is not one tan­gi­ble in­di­ca­tion of re­turn for the ex­pen­di­ture en­gaged in. Quot­ing in­ter­na­tion­al news­pa­per re­ports on the suc­cess­ful or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as brings lit­tle po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic cur­ren­cy to the coun­try and does noth­ing to as­suage Man­ning's crit­ics. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, those who have long charged the Prime Min­is­ter with be­ing on an ego trip have seen in the host­ing of the con­fer­ences Man­ning's pur­suit of the goal of be­ing on cen­tre stage with the likes of Oba­ma, Brown, Cha-vez and oth­ers, and T&T play­ing host to a few of the world's ma­jor pow­ers but all of this re­sult­ing in lit­tle re­turn to the pop­u­la­tion.�If the pres­i­den­tial-type palace and its as­so­ci­at­ed build­ings, the de­sire to ac­quire a pri­vate jet, coat-of-arms-adorned prime min­is­te­r­i­al ve­hi­cle, and the per­son­al trap­pings are fac­tored in­to the as­sess­ment, then there is much to in­dict the po­lit­i­cal leader dur­ing an elec­tions cam­paign.�

Fur­ther, there are those who see in Man­ning's con­sti­tu­tion­al draft the de­sire to ac­crue fur­ther to the cen­tre; an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, a Min­istry of Jus­tice to give the Gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol over the ju­di­cia­ry, an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to be giv­en pow­ers to pros­e­cute are all is­sues up­on which the Prime Min­is­ter can be in­dict­ed. The ev­i­dence of Man­ning's start­ing to take stock of how he and his Gov­ern­ment are be­ing per­ceived and the dis­si­pa­tion of po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy are be­ing made man­i­fest in his in­ter­est in di­a­logue with the Chief Jus­tice and the ju­di­cia­ry. Fur­ther, the Prime Min­is­ter seems to be com­ing around to the fact that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form must in­volve the pop­u­la­tion, and this notwith­stand­ing his pas­sion­ate ad­vo­ca­cy of sev­er­al of the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­pos­als in his "Pro­fes­sor" Man­ning lec­tures. His re­treat to To­ba­go to counter the Row­ley fac­tor is an­oth­er of the in­di­ca­tions of him be­com­ing con­scious of his po­lit­i­cal fal­li­bil­i­ty. He has gone the fur­ther dis­tance of find­ing com­mon cause with Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day as they both face their own bat­tle lines and op­po­nents. We will pick this up next week af­ter the out­come of yes­ter­day's meet­ing is made known.