Michael Del­blond

One thing that should give the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty se­ri­ous pause is the even­tu­al­i­ty of Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day agree­ing on some "ne­go­ti­at­ed" ver­sion of the draft con­sti­tu­tion which not on­ly be­comes pre­dictably stuck in the col­lec­tive craw but can nei­ther be swal­lowed nor spat out. That they have the par­lia­men­tary votes to pass what­ev­er they agree on is, at any rate, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble when the pop­u­lace is oth­er­wise dis­tract­ed. The last time those two fel­lows met and pro­duced the "Crowne Plaza Ac­cord" should be in­struc­tive as to what to ex­pect. Af­ter the 18-18 dead­lock, Pres­i­dent Robin­son called PM Bas­deo Pan­day and Op­po­si­tion Leader Patrick Man­ning and tossed the ball in their court to come up with some, hope­ful­ly, states­man-like so­lu­tion.

Man­ning stat­ed pub­licly that the trio (Robin­son, Pan­day and him­self) had (col­lec­tive­ly) a cen­tu­ry or so of par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence and he couldn't think of a group more equal to the task. Af­ter much "ne­go­ti­a­tion," Man­ning and Pan­day emerged from Crowne Plaza ho­tel to take ques­tions from the press and in­form them, and by ex­ten­sion the wider pub­lic, that they had an am­i­ca­ble "lim­it­ed agree­ment" which would here­after be known as the Crowne Plaza Ac­cord and would pre­sum­ably car­ry the sta­tus of a "solemn gen­tle­man's agree­ment." Some gen­tle­man, some agree­ment! Pan­day all but "hugged and kissed" Man­ning as the Bas waved away the mem­bers of the press with the seem­ing­ly pa­tro­n­is­ing words to Man­ning, "Come on kid, let's go home," or words to that ef­fect.

But it wasn't long be­fore one fel­low was de­scrib­ing the oth­er as "a born-again de­mon" and was him­self be­ing char­ac­terised as ex­hibit­ing "the machi­na­tions of a de­ment­ed mind." Who am I to judge as to the ve­rac­i­ty or oth­er­wise of ei­ther or both char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions? As I watched those two "would-be world-class states­men" in ap­par­ent agree­ment and warm em­brace, I sim­ply couldn't avoid a some­what fi­nan­cial ex­trav­a­gance as I com­mit­ted my­self to "a pen­ny for their thoughts"–no mat­ter that the pen­ny should be shared be­tween the two, based on my eval­u­a­tion on pos­si­ble qual­i­ty of ef­fort. The two "sea­soned politi­cians" ap­peared to have reached agree­ment on the choice of Speak­er of the House and vowed that they would ac­cept who­ev­er was the Pres­i­dent's choice of Prime Min­is­ter. They had, in ef­fect, con­ferred on the Pres­i­dent "a con­sti­tu­tion­al pre­rog­a­tive" that sim­ply didn't ex­ist. Talk about falling on your sword!

To add in­sult to in­jury, the Pres­i­dent passed judg­ment on the ba­sis of "moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues." Far be it from me to seem in­sen­si­tive to the del­i­cate and far-reach­ing po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ram­i­fi­ca­tions, hav­ing re­gard to the ap­par­ent "eth­nic po­lar­i­sa­tion," par­tic­u­lar­ly the then awk­ward re­la­tion­ship and pitched bat­tles be­tween Pres­i­dent Robin­son and PM Pan­day. The Pres­i­dent had warned against "a creep­ing dic­ta­tor­ship" in PM Pan­day's po­lit­i­cal dis­pen­sa­tion. Cu­ri­ous­ly, he stopped short of re­fer­ring to what Pan­day him­self ad­mit­ted was a sus­pi­cion of "rogue ele­phants and run­away hors­es," pre­sum­ably a eu­phemism for "a gal­lop­ing klep­toc­ra­cy." Pan­day's sup­port­ers were quick to take um­brage at what they pur­port­ed to see as the Pres­i­dent cast­ing as­per­sion on the val­ues of those of Mr Pan­day's ilk–a con­ve­nient ral­ly­ing point, one might say, or a po­lit­i­cal stick to beat Robin­son with. In­ci­den­tal­ly, there was no dearth of un­so­licit­ed ad­vice as to what the Pres­i­dent should or should not do.

There was even the sug­ges­tion that Pres­i­dent Robin­son should sum­mon those two gen­tle­men and knock their heads to­geth­er un­til they reached a fea­si­ble po­lit­i­cal arrange­ment. Whether that ex­er­cise would im­pair or en­hance the think­ing process or sim­ply pro­duce a hol­low sound is any­body's guess. Pan­day claimed that who­ev­er re­neged on the "Plaza Ac­cord" would pay a heavy po­lit­i­cal price. Not be­ing privy to what went on be­hind closed doors, I'm at a loss to say who was sly fox or sil­ly ox. Did the Fox act in haste and had in­fi­nite leisure to re­pent and lick his wounds? If John Humphrey is to be be­lieved, per­haps Robin­son might have un­wit­ting­ly left the Sil­ver Fox with the im­pres­sion that he was a "shoo-in" choice for PM. In which case the Fox might have been out­foxed or did he out­fox him­self?

Here's hop­ing that the Fox will find a vine­yard where the grapes are not so sour and out of reach. Per­haps the desert fox could learn a thing or two from "sly mon­goose, dog know yuh name..." If I might end where I be­gan, what prospect does a Man­ning/ Pan­day craft­ed Con­sti­tu­tion have of en­gen­der­ing the req­ui­site con­fi­dence, pro­bity, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, or cred­i­bil­i­ty for that mat­ter? The case rests, M'lud.