Clevon Raphael

?The now op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is on the ropes, hav­ing re­ceived near dead­ly body blows on May 24 from the new­ly con­sti­tut­ed Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP), which over­threw the 54-year-old ven­er­a­ble po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion 29-41.

In the wake of this com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed de­vel­op­ment, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of its lead­ers, more so then Prime Min­is­ter and PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Patrick Man­ning, some are say­ing the in­juries are fa­tal and the PNM could nev­er re­cov­er from the dev­as­tat­ing PP beat­ing. I beg to dif­fer but how soon the par­ty is able to re­bound, to make it­self once again an at­trac­tive gov­ern­ing en­ti­ty, de­pends on a lot of things, most of them in the hands of the new, or more ac­cu­rate­ly in­ter­im, leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The peo­ple have placed great con­fi­dence and hope in the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led PP, and it would take mon­u­men­tal mis­takes or mis­deeds on its part to dis­lodge it from its hard-fought-for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the coun­try. Even though the PP en­joys tremen­dous sup­port at this time, for a democ­ra­cy to be tru­ly func­tion­al an equal­ly strong op­po­si­tion is manda­to­ry. On­ly time would tell if Row­ley and his group would pro­vide that kind of check and bal­ance to keep the PP regime on an even keel.

Or if the PNM would ever be able to walk the cor­ri­dors of pow­er again. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Row­ley, in his haste to earn his spurs as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, is be­hav­ing like the old-style PNM. In­stead of look­ing to score po­lit­i­cal points against a regime that is en­joy­ing the tra­di­tion­al hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od, he should be con­cen­trat­ing on re­build­ing the PNM. Em­ploy­ing the time-worn tac­tic of wait­ing to catch the Gov­ern­ment out on some mat­ter or the oth­er, like he has cho­sen to do with the Jack Warn­er/Fi­fa non-is­sue, would not cut it. Re­brand­ing the PNM is the on­ly way he can ever hope the par­ty could be­come a po­lit­i­cal force to be reck­oned with, and to achieve this it is im­per­a­tive that Dr Row­ley im­me­di­ate­ly em­barks on a path of re­struc­tur­ing the par­ty. Politi­cians in this coun­try have a pen­chant for ig­nor­ing colum­nists, ar­ro­gant­ly dis­miss­ing us with the mantra that they were elect­ed by the peo­ple and who the hell are these pesky writ­ers to tell them what they should do. Ver­i­ly, they do so at their own per­il and they just have to look at the im­me­di­ate past Prime Min­is­ter who epit­o­mised the neg­a­tives of po­lit­i­cal ar­ro­gance.

So for what­ev­er it is worth, let me give Dr Row­ley a lit­tle ad­vice on af­ford­ing the PNM a greater chance of be­com­ing once more rel­e­vant to the coun­try's pol­i­tics as I be­lieve the par­ty would nev­er die. To start with, the mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin West must move to have the par­ty adopt a one man, one vote process in elect­ing its na­tion­al of­fi­cers. Yes, the change so suc­cess­ful­ly achieved by Jack Warn­er in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which was the cat­a­lyst for the PP to reach where it is to­day, even though it was not in the pic­ture at that time. The del­e­gate sys­tem is used by the PNM and as Row­ley him­self would tes­ti­fy, this can be ma­nip­u­lat­ed to achieve a fraud­u­lent re­sult. It would be vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to do so with the more trans­par­ent sys­tem un­der which Per­sad-Bis-ses­sar was able to trounce Bas­deo Pan­day and take over the UNC. Who knows, Patrick Man­ning may not have been able to win the 1996 elec­tion bat­tle in which he beat Row­ley. There are many ques­tions sur­round­ing the fair­ness of that event.

I would nev­er for­get the de­ject­ed, soli­tary fig­ure of Row­ley, face down on a counter at the Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, when he re­alised he had lost the con­test. So he should be in the van­guard to make his par­ty a more de­mo­c­ra­t­ic en­ti­ty in keep­ing with the changes that any or­gan­i­sa­tion must un­der­go to meet the re­quire­ments of the re­al world. The PNM must al­so do away with this ar­cha­ic un­writ­ten rule that speaks of the para­mount­cy of the leader, so de­struc­tive­ly op­er­at­ing un­der the guise of "dis­ci­pline." Dem­a­gogues and despot­ic lead­ers breed and thrive un­der such a sys­tem, as nu­mer­ous PNM func­tionar­ies know so hor­ri­bly well. No longer should peo­ple be sub­ject to the pa­tro­n­is­ing and dis­re­spect­ing de­c­la­ra­tion of "the prime min­is­ter has spo­ken..." An­oth­er sore point which is stub­born­ly be­ing main­tained by the PNM is this dic­tum that its min­is­ters and coun­cil­lors must wear par­ty ties at of­fi­cial func­tions, even in Par­lia­ment.

As harm­less as this might ap­pear, the bal­isi­er is a di­vi­sive sym­bol in that it rep­re­sents a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of which not every cit­i­zen is a mem­ber–or sup­port­er. By all means wear your tie or what­ev­er par­ty sym­bol you may want but on­ly at PNM oc­ca­sions. Af­ter all, we are not liv­ing in a dic­ta­tor­ship where the par­ty and the leader are para­mount. In oth­er words, Kei­th Row­ley, you must re­move the PNM from its prison of yes­ter­year and tweak it in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry. Who knows, you might be able to achieve some­thing which at this time seems im­pos­si­ble.