Ken Ali

?One week lat­er, T&T still does not know why it is head­ing to a snap gen­er­al elec­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's Mon­day night elec­tion shindig was a frothy song-and-dance that amount­ed to pre­cious lit­tle, ex­cept, of course, for the cos­met­ic pur­pose of arous­ing PNM pas­sions. Man­ning did not even pre­tend to ad­vance co­gent rea­sons for his abrupt step. Nor did he feel moved to do so Wednes­day be­fore the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the coun­try's most in­flu­en­tial sec­tor. He has not prof­fered–and civ­il so­ci­ety has gen­er­al­ly not de­mand­ed–an ex­pla­na­tion why Par­lia­ment has been scrapped mid­way in­to the leg­isla­tive term and the na­tion has been placed on elec­tion high alert. It's as if a gen­er­al elec­tion is a rou­tine na­tion­al af­fair, with the Prime Min­is­ter re­serv­ing the right to abort the leg­is­la­ture at any old time and drag­ging a stunned and con­fused na­tion to the polls. There is no out­rage over lapsed leg­is­la­tion and, in par­tic­u­lar, over the yet-again-post­poned lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

A Gov­ern­ment that has been tout­ing a more rel­e­vant and peo­ple-friend­ly lo­cal gov­ern­ment sec­tor is now pre­sid­ing over a mori­bund set-up. No sober­ing voic­es have emerged to cau­tion the Gov­ern­ment over elec­tion­eer­ing ex­pen­di­ture with­out par­lia­men­tary over­sight. The Prime Min­is­ter, af­ter all, does not now have even the per­func­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of go­ing to Par­lia­ment for rub­ber stamp­ing of Gov­ern­ment's fi­nan­cial deal­ings. The Man­ning-run Cab­i­net, the high­est ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sion-mak­ing body in the land, is not re­strained, even if nom­i­nal­ly, by par­lia­men­tary checks and bal­ances or even the queru­lous tones of cer­tain Op­po­si­tion MPs. None of this ap­pears to have pro­voked most of the so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing in­de­pen­dent an­a­lysts and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists. In­stead, with the sound of the elec­tion bell, T&T has in­evitably bro­ken in­to po­lit­i­cal camps and has de­scend­ed in­to an elec­tion­eer­ing gayelle. Yet again, we have en­tered a sil­ly sea­son of ban­ners and buntings and not ac­count­abil­i­ty and analy­sis. In all of this, the po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion has been so fever­ish­ly at­tempt­ing to put its house in or­der that it has es­sen­tial­ly turned its back on these core is­sues. The mat­ters mer­it a rea­soned re­sponse from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. In­stead, Per­sad-Bisses­sar jumped in­to raw elec­tion­eer­ing with a weak-kneed start to her prime min­is­te­r­i­al cam­paign at Mara­bel­la Mon­day night, in a me­an­der­ing ad­dress large­ly de­void of sub­stance.

She did not raise a sweat about T&T be­ing on au­to pi­lot with­out a Par­lia­ment and did not warn about the dan­gers of unchecked spend­ing. Her de­mand for the gen­er­al elec­tion date was clothed in the rhetoric of the gid­dy­ing sea­son, dar­ing Man­ning to go the polls and fore­cast­ing his de­feat. There was no clin­i­cal analy­sis of the pit­falls of this young, emerg­ing plur­al na­tion, with ex­ten­sive in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments, run­ning the risk of eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty with­out a Par­lia- ment and a spe­cif­ic elec­tion date. Mem­o­ry seems to have failed the coun­try about the un­con­strained spend­ing at the time of the 18-18 grid­lock, as Man­ning sought to gain the elec­toral as­cen­dan­cy. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, un­doubt­ed­ly ex­cit­ed about her can­di­da­cy and her good stand­ing with the elec­torate, has be­come ab­sorbed at the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of her oc­cu­py­ing the plush White­hall seat with­in the next few weeks. What, re­al­ly, is a Min­istry of the Peo­ple? Isn't it the role of all min­istries to cut the log­jam and de­liv­er to the peo­ple? Shouldn't there in­stead be in­creased fo­cus on Pub­lic Ser­vice re­form?

As for Man­ning, he must ex­plain–and Per­sad-Bisses­sar must in­sist up­on it–whether or not the se­nior cit­i­zens' grant is be­ing hiked at month-end and, if so, what is to be the im­pact on the na­tion­al bud­get. He must de­tail his plans to slash cor­po­ra­tion tax. These are wel­come mea­sures, of course, but they must be jux­ta­posed against a huge­ly deficit bud­get and a hefty debt bur­den. They must be prop­er­ly ra­tio­nalised and not sur­rep­ti­tious­ly in­tro­duced halfway through the an­nu­al fis­cal mea­sures. In oth­er words, at the end of a sec­ond en­er­gy boom, the Gov­ern­ment must not be per­mit­ted to de­rail a limp­ing econ­o­my on the al­tar of elec­tion ex­pe­di­en­cy. Equal­ly, there must be mi­cro­scop­ic ex­am­i­na­tion of oth­er fi­nan­cial mea­sures by a Prime Min­is­ter grasp­ing at straws to steady a woe­ful­ly un­pop­u­lar regime. T&T has an ug­ly his­to­ry of be­ing sub­vert­ed by ob­scene raids on the Trea­sury on the eve of gen­er­al elec­tions. The 1986 ex­am­ple is the most poignant and wretched. On the way to be­ing vot­ed out of na­tion­al of­fice for the first time in its 30-year his­to­ry, a tor­tured and shell-shocked PNM launched such an elec­tion­eer­ing spree that new Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son in­toned: "The Trea­sury is emp­ty." Robin­son then moved to slash pub­lic ser­vants' salaries and perquisites.

As an aside, Man­ning–in a most disin­gen­u­ous move–on Mon­day damned the Robin­son ad­min­is­tra­tion for cut­ting the pub­lic of­fi­cers' earn­ings. The cur­rent hi-jinks calls for parental guid­ance, and, in this re­spect, the so­ci­ety must in­sist up­on Man­ning putting an end to his sophistry and blus­ter, and set­ting the elec­tion date. Sure­ly, the West­min­ster sys­tem nev­er en­vis­aged a Prime Min­is­ter tan­ta­lis­ing a na­tion and prompt­ing a sub­ver­sion of eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ties in play­ing foot­sy with a poll date. The cur­rent elec­tion in Britain con­firms this. Such a sit­u­a­tion would sure­ly be un­heard of in a de­vel­oped na­tion, which, in­ci­den­tal­ly, Man­ning is still quixot­i­cal­ly tout­ing for T&T. The stock mar­ket in a mod­ern, de­vel­oped coun­try would have be­come chaot­ic if the Par­lia­ment was dis­solved and na­tion­als were kept in sus­pense about when they could ex­er­cise their fran­chise. Af­ter sev­er­al self-serv­ing pre­ma­ture gen­er­al elec­tions in re­cent times, the set­ting of a spe­cif­ic date now has to be an is­sue for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. But now the coun­try has to quick­ly re­cov­er from this tur­bu­lent start to the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, and in­sist up­on high eth­i­cal stan­dards and the air­ing of crit­i­cal na­tion­al is­sues.

For his part, Man­ning sought last Mon­day night to ob­scure and blur the is­sues, in ad­di­tion to side­step­ping the rea­son why he sum­moned an elec­tion at a time when he should have been de­liv­er­ing on man­i­festo promis­es. He would con­tin­ue to snub con­cerns of an en­light­ened pop­u­lace at his own per­il. In­deed, his flag­ging ap­proval rat­ing is the re­sult of a so­ci­ety pulling the plug on an un­der-per­form­ing leader, brand­ed with squan­der­ma­nia, ar­ro­gance and a cock-eyed view of cor­rup­tion. But the most cru­cial is­sue at this time is who is mind­ing the store in a land with­out a Par­lia­ment.