Michael Del­blond

?Some may pre­fer to hype the "face-off" be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his for­mer min­is­ter and deputy leader as the usu­al po­lit­i­cal kan­gatang, pre­mier po­lit­i­cal mud wrestling or Sid­ney Poiti­er's Black­board Jun­gle. How­ev­er, I'm re­mind­ed of a French say­ing that can be trans­lat­ed as, "The more things change, the more they re­main the same." I'm there­fore in­clined to sus­pect that there's more in the mor­tar than the pes­tle–more, I haz­ard a guess, than even the cur­rent pro­tag­o­nists re­alise. My mind goes back to many moons ago when, in par­lia­men­tary op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley chal­lenged then PNM leader Mr Man­ning for lead­er­ship of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Com­ment­ing on the cir­cum­stances of the chal­lenge, Dr Lenny Saith had this to say, "...the elec­tion–which Man­ning won–was a pure­ly in­ter­nal mat­ter and should not have been blown over in­to the pub­lic do­main."

He felt that the bruis­ing cam­paign would have done dam­age to the par­ty's im­age both with­in and with­out. He fur­ther hoped that the ev­i­dent fac­tions could ar­rive at a sort of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that would al­low the par­ty to be­come a co­her­ent po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion and a se­ri­ous con­tender for po­lit­i­cal of­fice. The PNM sup­pos­ed­ly had a tra­di­tion for not wash­ing its dirty linen in pub­lic. How­ev­er, that did not pre­vent Dr Row­ley and his sup­port­ers from be­ing the tar­gets of "raga­muf­fin be­hav­iour." Sur­pris­ing­ly, Man­ning was not seen to frown on that de­vel­op­ment with the prompt­ness that would have giv­en his re­sponse an un­equiv­o­cal cre­dence. There was then a sub­stan­tial body of opin­ion with­in the PNM that had se­ri­ous reser­va­tions about Mr Man­ning's lead­er­ship style and his un­will­ing­ness and/or in­abil­i­ty to amend that style so that the par­ty was gen­uine­ly com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven and tal­ent was not de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ed from par­tic­i­pa­tion sim­ply be­cause opin­ions were not in con­so­nance with that of the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship.

And hence loy­al par­ty mem­bers who were com­mit­ted to its found­ing prin­ci­ples and its sur­vival would be ex­pect­ed to dis­play a blind, bovine, "buck­le-my-shoe" sense of loy­al­ty that puts leader be­fore par­ty, par­ty be­fore coun­try. Re­gret­tably, that's one of Dr Williams' du­bi­ous lega­cies. It's not sug­gest­ed that par­ty in­dis­ci­pline should be the or­der of the day with Tom, Dick and Har­ry­lal do­ing their own thing. On be­ing vul­gar­ly ac­cost­ed by Man­ning's over-en­thu­si­as­tic (mis­guid­ed?) sup­port­ers, Kei­th Row­ley asked, "What crime have I com­mit­ted?" What crime, in­deed? No one en­joys or should en­joy pro­pri­ety rights on the lead­er­ship of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. In­ci­den­tal­ly, Row­ley ap­peared not to have been a sore los­er. Ken Val­ley, who sup­port­ed Man­ning, re­port­ed­ly had this to say, "It's all be­hind us now and wa­ter un­der the bridge. We could cuss, get on bad and make back up. Let by­gones be by­gones, that's all part of the game."

It's my un­der­stand­ing that Row­ley's in­tegri­ty and char­ac­ter were im­pugned then as now by un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed in­nu­en­do. Man­ning, we're told, of­fered Row­ley the "olive branch" and con­ced­ed that he could work with Row­ley and was sure that Row­ley could work with him. Row­ley was cau­tioned to en­sure that he was not be­ing hand­ed "a sting­ing net­tle," pol­i­tics be­ing what it is. Iron­i­cal­ly, yes­ter­day's Rot­tweil­er is be­ing vic­timised and os­tracised for not be­ing to­day's poo­dle. On a more se­ri­ous note, Dr Saith has a point that the choice of the leader of the PNM is the par­ty's in­ter­nal af­fair, on­ly if he means that there should not be ex­ter­nal lob­by­ing to in­flu­ence an out­come. But giv­en the "first-past-the-post" elec­toral sys­tem, the en­tire pop­u­la­tion has a stake in the choice of po­lit­i­cal leader of any vi­able po­lit­i­cal for­ma­tion end­ing up as prime min­is­ter or ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent of the coun­try.

Giv­en the range of pos­si­bil­i­ties, we've no guar­an­tee that we may not be in for some roller-coast­er ride not ex­clud­ing sce­nar­ios like "Al­ice in Won­der­land" or "Mal­ice in Blun­der­land." Now I don't have a dog in the fight and cheer­ful­ly ad­mit that the PNM, as a po­lit­i­cal brand name, oc­cu­pies a cer­tain psy­cho­log­i­cal space in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape. It has de­vel­oped a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of its own and in a cri­sis (re­al or chore­o­graphed) it tends to cir­cle the weapons about the leader, syco­phan­ti­cal­ly im­ply­ing, "Our leader, right or wrong! Our leader, weak or strong!" PNM's founder Dr Er­ic Williams' mantra can al­ways be in­voked, to wit, "Up­on this PNM rock I will build my po­lit­i­cal church and the po­lit­i­cal gates of hell shall nev­er pre­vail against it." There are, how­ev­er, some who feel that un­less the par­ty can come to terms with its stub­born streak and ad­just its per­spec­tive and modus operan­di, the much vaunt­ed rock may some­day turn in­to a peb­ble.