Ken Ali

A cyn­ic was up­set at the sur­vey re­sult that 80 per cent of na­tion­als are dis­sat­is­fied with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's gov­er­nance. "Eighty per cent!" he damned. "How could that be?"

Be­fore I could of­fer a re­tort that Man­ning has been, well, un­der-per­form­ing in of­fice, he shot back: "You mean as many as 20 per cent ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve he is do­ing a good job?" The Sel­wyn Ryan poll is sig­nif­i­cant, maybe even sem­i­nal, for sev­er­al rea­sons, not least be­cause the learned pro­fes­sor opt­ed to con­duct a po­lit­i­cal sur­vey at a time of the year nor­mal­ly re­served for parang and pastelles, sor­rel and San­ta, car­ols and cake. It in­di­cates there is no respite from the fre­net­ic pace of lo­cal pol­i­tics and the vir­tu­al an­guish over the state of the coun­try.

Sec­ond­ly, Man­ning is com­ing off the sup­posed af­ter-glow of sip­ping cham­pagne from a gold­en gob­let along­side Her Majesty and sidling up to in­ter­na­tion­al lead­ers who or­di­nar­i­ly would have lit­tle time for the strong­man of a tiny is­land at the bot­tom of the Caribbean Sea. In­deed, the Com­mon­wealth par­ley ought to have been the trump-and-fol­low-suit en­core of his gid­dy Barack Oba­ma mo­ment at the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as. It's star­tling that four out of five sur­veyed peo­ple would give the thumbs down to Man­ning af­ter he shelled out some $1.5 bil­lion for his ego-boost­ing con­fer­ences and con­tin­ues his drum­beat of T&T's as­cent to de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus.

Clear­ly, he did not even reap pub­lic re­la­tions div­i­dends from his heady and cost­ly con­fer­ence twin peaks.

As for him con­vinc­ing the na­tion of his Vi­sion 2020, well that re­mains a cru­el bar­room joke. And there is yet an­oth­er fac­tor. The overnight con­ver­sion of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­to a me­dia dar­ling, en­joy­ing wide­spread cross-eth­nic ap­peal, is a strong point­er that T&T is once more on the hunt for na­tion­al lead­er­ship and may even ex­per­i­ment, like it did in 1986 and 1995. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has launched what she doubtless­ly hopes would be a long surge to White­hall, or wher­ev­er the prime min­is­ter's of­fice would be in two years' time. A siz­able num­ber of COP dis­si­dents, who are dis­af­fect­ed with Win­ston Dook­er­an's wood­en man­ner, pic­ture Kam­la as the in­evitable leader of a fused op­po­si­tion en­ti­ty.

Let's be clear, though, that this does not in­di­cate a shoo-in for Per­sad-Bisses­sar in her par­ty's polls, since she still has to con­front her own demons, the UNC boys club and a dis­cern­ing par­ty flock. She would learn soon enough that Bas­deo Pan­day and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj are no-holds-barred for­mi­da­ble foes, what­ev­er their re­spec­tive Achilles' heel. There is fur­ther ev­i­dence of the na­tion­al mood for ex­per­i­ment­ing, with the Ryan find­ing that Dr Kei­th Row­ley has now ful­ly emerged as Man­ning's arch an-tag­o­nist, though he would have to sur­mount the hur­dle of the PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee when the gen­er­al elec­tion bell is next tolled.

He may be screw­ing up our coun­try's de­vel­op­ment, but as a politi­cian Man­ning is sharp and as­tute, even if un­der­stat­ed, and, as a re­sult, Row­ley would do well to emerge from the po­lit­i­cal ex­e­cu­tion­er's trap his boss has care­ful­ly laid for him. But what does it say about Man­ning that there is such wide­spread and in­tense dis­gruntle­ment of his na­tion­al lead­er­ship af­ter he has had a cu­mu­la­tive na­tion­al bud­get of some $300 bil­lion this decade? Is it that we are a dif­fi­cult na­tion to please, ru­ined by the lofty ex­pec­ta­tions that are a by-prod­uct of our close ties to the ad­vanced North Amer­i­can me­trop­o­lis? Is it that T&T sits un­easi­ly un­der PNM rule, frus­trat­ed and ag­gra­vat­ed by its medi­oc­rity and tired, unin­spir­ing and hack­neyed man­ner?

Is the prob­lem that Man­ning, like the Pe­ter Prin­ci­ple, has been pro­mot­ed to the height of his in­com­pe­tence? Is the na­tion re­belling against what Ryan him­self brands as Man­ning's "hubris syn­drome," or what you and me may term "pow­er go­ing to his head?" Af­ter all, a haughty and bun-gling leader is a nasty dou­ble neg­a­tive in pol­i­tics. The PNM has dis­put­ed the Ryan sur­vey re­sults–and the poll­ster does, in­deed, have a che­quered back­ground in the field–but no one can de­ny his mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion, char­ac­terised by warped pri­or­i­ties and in­equitable de­vel­op- ment, which have made crime and pover­ty scourges even in a time of much re­sources.?To be sure, the sur­vey al­so de­liv­ered a crush­ing in­dict­ment on Pan­day's bid to clutch on­to lead­er­ship of a par­ty he led from rub­ble to re­spect and back to ru­in.

Man­ning's pedes­tri­an per­for­mance and Pan­day's stran­gu­la­tion of the UNC raise pen­e­tra­tive ques­tions about T&T's in­abil­i­ty to max­imise its lead­er­ship po­ten­tial al­most 50 years af­ter po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence. There are sev­er­al an­cil­lary is­sues, such as those of suc­ces­sion plan­ning, about why some of our finest minds are not be­ing lured to pub­lic ser­vice, about why there isn't a pro­gres­sive, bi­par­ti­san ap­proach to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and about the can­cer­ous cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and squan­der­ma­nia. Maybe the most woe­ful as­pect is that our coun­try re­mains gen­er­al­ly im­pris­oned by the evil bond-age of eth­nic pol­i­tics, even as our lead­ers preach en­light­en­ment and we boast of a so­phis­ti­cat­ed land of record num­bers of ter­tiary-ed­u­cat­ed stu­dents.

For its part, the uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty has fall­en flat in fail­ing to in­cul­cate both lec­tur­ers and stu­dents with a so­cial con­science. The un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion is wors­ened by preva­lent ap­a­thy, to the point that labour protests fall flat, com­mu­ni­ty up­ris­ings are a mere flash-in-the-pan and more and more in­flu­en­tial voic­es are turn­ing silent. The sharp irony is that peo­ple are suf­fi­cient­ly sen­si­tive and de­lib­er­ate to ap­pre­ci­ate that the Patrick Man­ning Gov­ern­ment should im­prove the so­cial and eco­nom­ic struc­ture and de­liv­er more goods and ser­vices with the rich trea­sury with which it is en­dowed.

For its part, the Man­ning regime is like­ly to fol­low up its crit­i­cism of the poll­ster by in­ten­si­fy­ing its pub­lic re­la­tions fluff, the knee-jerk re­sponse of many gov­ern­ments that are in freefall. With the shift­ing sands in the UNC and the Row­ley fac­tor in the PNM, the po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment re­mains flu­id and the prize en­tic­ing. Man­ning is sure­ly wound­ed, and, in a fig­u­ra­tive sense, sport­ing a blood­ied nose, like what Italy's Sil­vio Berlus­coni has had to en­dure in a re­al brutish man­ner.

Ken Ali co-hosts the pop­u­lar week­day dis­cus­sion show on 106.1 FM, from 6 am to 9 am