?Per­cy Cezair

?Will the down­grad­ing of Bas­deo Pan­day and his re­place­ment as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar change the dy­nam­ics of T&T pol­i­tics and lead even­tu­al­ly to her be­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter? The ex­tent of her vic­to­ry sent Pan­day in­to pos­si­ble re­tire­ment and she has now turned her sights to the next cam­paign, the re­moval from of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. In her quest to sat­is­fy that am­bi­tion, how­ev­er, she should be aware that the two tar­gets are not the same. The bat­tle with Pan­day was con­fined to a do­mes­tic par­ty af­fair. One rea­son for his de­feat may have been the be­lief that the par­ty's fu­ture de­pend­ed on its abil­i­ty to be­come the gov­ern­ment and the neg­a­tive po­lit­i­cal bag­gage he car­ried made that an al­most im­pos­si­ble goal. It is not that the par­ty loved Per­sad-Bisses­sar more and Pan­day less, it was sim­ply that in spite of UNC be­lief that the PNM was at its most vul­ner­a­ble, Pan­day as a fu­ture can­di­date for Prime Min­is­ter ap­peared even worse.

It was al­so ob­vi­ous to al­most every­one in the par­ty that Ramesh Ma­haraj, be­cause of his past his­to­ry with­in the UNC, was not an op­tion, there­fore a first woman can­di­date for Prime Min­is­ter may be a po­lit­i­cal plus. This was fun­da­men­tal­ly a ready-made sit­u­a­tion. The next elec­tion is a long way off and Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be very care­ful that she does not as a re­sult un­der­es­ti­mate any chal­lenge to the PNM. Notwith­stand­ing the pre­scient cal­cu­la­tions of the coun­try's self-pro­claimed po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists that Mr Man­ning's days are num­bered and his sit­u­a­tion to­day, be­cause of un­favourable pub­lic per­cep­tions, may be quite dif­fer­ent than in the past, Mr Man­ning's po­lit­i­cal ca­reer has al­ways been dogged by con­sis­tent un­re­lent­ing pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy over the years that he has been Prime Min­is­ter but he is still there. There­fore, judg­ing from his nor­mal style of gov­ern­ing he will more than like­ly re­spond with the dis­tinct ad­van­tage of in­cum­ben­cy, longer ex­pe­ri­ence, close fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the coun­try's trib­al po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry and as a 24-hour-a-day po­lit­i­cal in­fight­er with a par­ty which still ful­ly sup­ports him and knows how to bring out the vote in con­stituen­cies that mat­ter on Elec­tion Day.

His at­ti­tude at present ap­pears to be that notwith­stand­ing a high­ly dis­ap­point­ed pop­u­la­tion, there is ab­solute­ly no done deal and he takes on in a very vo­cif­er­ous man­ner all those who he be­lieves wish to pick a fight with him. Strange as it may seem, ab­solute­ly noth­ing dis­con­certs him from con­tin­u­ing to pur­sue his heav­i­ly crit­i­cised agen­da. In this re­spect he should be re­mind­ed of the sto­ry of the dead cat on the porch. If it is not re­moved quick­ly the smell con­tin­ues to get worse. Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar's hope–and in pol­i­tics hope springs eter­nal–may be that the PNM, whose sup­port she be­lieves has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed since the last elec­tion, can be split and dis­lodged if at­tacked di­rect­ly on is­sues re­lat­ing to crime, in­ef­fi­cien­cy in gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions and, most of all, cor­rup­tion. On the is­sue of cor­rup­tion, even though they paid a price with the loss of an elec­tion, the UNC will not be able to present the pop­u­la­tion with an un­taint­ed his­to­ry. There­fore such at­tacks may not be use­ful un­less Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar can al­so make a strong case based on cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tives.

The cit­i­zens of T&T have had to live with the spec­tre of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion since in­de­pen­dence. Williams, who called his col­leagues mill­stones, like every oth­er Prime Min­is­ter in­clud­ing Pan­day af­ter him, op­er­at­ed reg­u­lar­ly out­side the scope of Cab­i­net de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Each one has by­passed and ig­nored the Cab­i­net and used an un­elect­ed man of busi­ness who even­tu­al­ly got them in­to se­ri­ous trou­ble. Mr Man­ning has ap­par­ent­ly tak­en in front and has al­ready at­tacked the ques­tion of in­tegri­ty and im­age by mak­ing cer­tain blunt as­ser­tions about Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Par­lia­ment. He and his min­is­ters, on the oth­er hand, need to an­swer a host of ques­tions re­gard­ing gen­er­al ef­fi­cien­cy in gov­ern­ment. Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar's first chal­lenge is ob­vi­ous­ly not the PNM. It is how to sig­nif­i­cant­ly and co­he­sive­ly merge the var­i­ous el­e­ments in and out of Par­lia­ment op­posed to the PNM. This is no sim­ple mat­ter and her po­lit­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty will be ful­ly test­ed. This was at­tempt­ed be­fore and sub­se­quent­ly col­lapsed.

One per­son who will con­tin­ue to be a ma­jor stum­bling block at every op­por­tu­ni­ty and who does not be­lieve that she has that ca­pa­bil­i­ty is Mr Pan­day, who may be wait­ing qui­et­ly to en­joy that fail­ure. What can she of­fer the COP as an equal part­ner is the big ques­tion. She has now sur­round­ed her­self with Pan­day's ex-as­so­ciates and they will ob­vi­ous­ly want to con­tin­ue to ex­ert in­flu­ence and per­son­al in­ter­ests. What about those who ac­tu­al­ly as­sist­ed in her vic­to­ry? Will they give way to COP am­bi­tions? That par­ty at the top is in fact most­ly old ONR, a mag­net for the dis­il­lu­sioned for­ev­er hop­ing for a part­ner with a con­ve­nient base. Whether the ex­per­i­ment had failed or not in the past, a con­struc­tive and trans­par­ent al­liance (a merg­er will be too dif­fi­cult) be­tween the two could cre­ate some se­ri­ous night­mares for the PNM. With a woman leader and a deal mak­er like Jack Warn­er, some kind of ac­com­mo­da­tion may be pos­si­ble. How­ev­er, his­to­ry is nev­er a liar and has shown that po­lit­i­cal coali­tions are gen­er­al­ly un­sta­ble.

The road to be­com­ing a prime min­is­ter can be de­scribed by many words, all mean­ing the same thing: cir­cuitous, crooked, de­vi­at­ing, di­vi­sive, pe­riphrastic, round­about, tor­tu­ous, cal­cu­lat­ing, eva­sive, in­sid­i­ous and mis­lead­ing. Any­one who is will­ing to be­come the leader of a coun­try is ex­pect­ed to recog­nise that lead­er­ship is not the same as jump­ing aboard every ill-ad­vised pub­lic protest. You will need to tell the peo­ple what ex­act­ly you stand for. In par­tic­u­lar on is­sues like a fixed date for elec­tions, term lim­its and cam­paign fi­nance re­form. While past be­hav­iour of the coun­try's vot­ers can eas­i­ly be de­scribed as in­com­pre­hen­si­ble, they will have to be con­vinced that what­ev­er is pre­sent­ed as a choice is a sound, sta­ble and vi­able en­ti­ty.