Ken Ali

?Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning must be gross­ly dis­ap­point­ed.Man­ning's ex­citable and emo­tion­al mono­logue in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day was doubtless­ly aimed at whip­ping up par­ti­san pas­sion on re­li­gious be­liefs, an ever-in­flam­ma­ble is­sue in this land.

To wild desk-thump­ing by his par­lia­men­tary devo­tees, the PM in­dulged in a me­an­der­ing, self-serv­ing and large­ly ir­rel­e­vant dis­course that would have been un­nec­es­sary if he had on­ly re­spond­ed to an ear­li­er query from whistle­blow­er Jack Warn­er. The ques­tions about the Gua­napo cathe­dral were straight­for­ward and war­rant­ed a sim­ple ex­pla­na­tion the day Warn­er, over­sized pic­ture in hand, de­mand­ed an ac­count and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Man­ning mum­bled a time­worn re­li­gious clich�, opt­ing to re­turn a week lat­er to zap al­most an hour of the al­ready lim­it­ed Op­po­si­tion day in the House. Ir­rel­e­van­cies aside, Man­ning pressed but­tons to seek to ig­nite a heat­ed re­li­gious de­bate about non-Chris­tians damn­ing a faith about which they know noth­ing and hound­ing the Prime Min­is­ter be­cause of his be­liefs. Even by Man­ning's well-known pen­chant for histri­on­ics while un­der at­tack, he was on trou­bling turf, guilty of goad­ing re­li­gious vit­ri­ol in the-ever fer­tile lo­cal cli­mate. "Per­se­cu­tion of the Full Gospel fel­low­ship move­ment has to come to an end," he slammed, in the alarmist man­ner of by­gone side­walk heretics. And: "I'll at­tend any church; that's my right! I'll con­sult whom I wish for spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence."

In char­ac­ter­is­tic high-hand­ed man­ner that has led crit­ics to de­cry that por­trays hubris syn­drome, Man­ning even damned two jour­nal­ists, dark­ly hint­ing that they could face a "spir­it lash." The hys­ter­i­cal pos­tur­ing mer­it­ed ei­ther one of two re­spons­es: Out­rage from a dumb­found­ed na­tion or ca­su­al dis­missal as an­oth­er fren­zied mouthing from the boy who cried wolf. Thank­ful­ly, the na­tion opt­ed for the lat­ter, tired and frus­trat­ed at Man­ning's fond­ness for emo­tive and vac­u­ous ut­ter­ing when he is un­der in­tense pub­lic pres­sure. Fran­tic re­spons­es from Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions would have had the ef­fect of spark­ing an ill-tem­pered holy war of words, in the process side­track­ing the na­tion from more press­ing con­cerns. There were the in­evitable mut­ed re­join­ders from the faith­ful on both sides of the re­li­gious aisle. But the mat­ter re­mained in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­ing hand­ed a sala­cious is­sue with which to make her de­but as Op­po­si­tion Leader.

Man­ning may have been pro­found­ly dis­ap­point­ed. He could do with a dis­trac­tion, what with Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­joy­ing a pro­tract­ed po­lit­i­cal hon­ey­moon in spite of jus­ti­fi­able dis­ap­point­ment over a cou­ple of her sen­a­to­r­i­al picks. Man­ning's brassy re­sponse in­di­cates that the Gov­ern­ment's dam­age con­trol mech­a­nism is lim­it­ed to no-holds-barred par­lia­men­tary out­bursts and gaudy pro­pa­gan­da ad­ver­tise­ments in the me­dia. As In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal pos­si­bly has lim­it­ed in­flu­ence with his boss, the PM sim­ply con­vinced that pub­lic grand- stand­ing is the best de­fence against ro­bust pub­lic at­tacks. As for the pub­lic's be­mused re­sponse to Man­ning's over-the-top state­ment, it prob­a­bly sug- gests the fur­ther ma­tur­ing of our so­ci­ety and its grit­ty de­ter­mi­na­tion not to be brow­beat­en with dri­v­el. In the end, the mat­ter re­mained un­re­solved. Most peo­ple have long been con­vinced that Man­ning bent the rules and fast-tracked the sys­tem for this enig­mat­ic la­dy of God who has much in­flu­ence over him and rep­re­sents him at in­ter­na­tion­al State hous­es. Not miss­ing a beat, the Prime Min­is­ter was pound­ing the pave­ment this week for the fast-ap­proach­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec- tion, even as the coun­try groans over a crit­i­cal wa­ter cri­sis that is, above all, a fail­ure of po­lit­i­cal man­age­ment.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, a long-time poster child of in­ef­fi­cien­cy, is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties man­ag­ing its com­plaint hot­line, fix­ing pipeline leaks and eq­ui­tably de­liv­er­ing truck-borne sup­plies. Pray, tell, just when would WASA ef­fec­tive­ly deal with the larg­er is­sue of win­ning more wa­ter, root­ing out cor­rup­tion and ef­fi­cient­ly man­ag­ing its af­fairs? For her part, Per­sad-Bisses­sar hasn't yet jumped on the wa­ter cri­sis, al­though to the cred­it of both Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan and MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, the for­mer re­cent­ly per­mit­ted de­bate on a mo­tion on the sub­ject filed by the lat­ter. The ef­fron­tery of Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment–just as with the church is­sue–is not about to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. In the midst of the Gov­ern­ment's po­lit­i­cal the­atre, a cu­ri­ous sideshow is de­vel­op­ing be­tween the Madam Op­po­si­tion Leader and Warn­er, ever a Jack in the box. Keen ob­servers have been not­ing Warn­er's shad­ow box­ing around Per­sad-Bisses­sar, mak­ing state­ments that ide­al­ly should come from her of­fice and gen­er­al­ly adopt­ing the role of co-pi­lot. There is an in­evitabil­i­ty of pub­lic clash­es with such dou­ble-head­ed lead­er­ship and the first un­seem­ly col­li­sion in­volved, of all peo­ple, se­r­i­al Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

Warn­er, clear­ly with­out con­fer­ring with the woman at the helm, an­nounced that Mark had been axed, since "the par­ty mem­ber­ship has ... asked for change" and that "the po­lit­i­cal leader is mere­ly re­spect­ing the wish­es of the mem­ber­ship." Not so, a dead­pan Kam­la seemed to sug­gest, reap­point­ing a re­lieved Mark, in the process end­ing the an­guish of the ca­reer op­po­si­tion leg­is­la­tor. There may be wild cel­e­bra­tions in the Mark house­hold, but in the house of the ris­ing sun, the Kam­jack duo may face ten­sion un­less they chart out each oth­er's re­spec­tive roles. Man­ning, mean­while, has awok­en to cor­rup­tion in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, a trou­bling re­al­i­ty that has long been known to most peo­ple ex­cept the hous­ing cor­po­ra­tion, that is, un­til the ap­point­ment of the trust­ed Jear­lean John. The bobol scan­dal is an in­dict­ment against a suc­ces­sion of line min­is­ters. Man­ning's larg­er as­sign­ment, how­ev­er, is con­fronting the tin­der­box T&T has be­come, with dis­grun­tled peo­ple per­suad­ed that the on­ly way to make the au­thor­i­ties hear is to block pub­lic road­ways.

The block­ade of the Beetham High­way was rank law­less­ness, but il­lus­trates the wide gulf in re­la­tions be­tween the com­mon man and the gov­ern­ing in­sti­tu­tions. The protest of sim­ple Pe­nal folks for a sup­ply of wa­ter il­lus­trates the ab­sence of jus­tice and fair­play, with some na­tion­als be­ing de­prived of even a once-a-week sup­ply while oth­ers can still sur­rep­ti­tious­ly wa­ter their lawns. Par­ty chair­man Con­rad Enill vir­tu­al­ly ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment's cred­i­bil­i­ty de­fi­cien­cy the oth­er day, but there have been no mean­ing­ful at­tempts to re­dress such faulty gov­er­nance. The sit­u­a­tion would sure­ly not be im­proved by Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's blus­ter on the con­tro­ver­sial church is­sue. A word to the wise!