There comes a time when re­gard­less of one's po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, coun­try must come be­fore any par­ti­san con­sid­er­a­tions. This is a po­si­tion we would like to see adopt­ed by all our politi­cians par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time when the pol­i­tics of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been fired up by the ad­vent of the new Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion on May 24. The Ju­ly 26 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion has added fu­el to the po­lit­i­cal steam and we the peo­ple had bet­ter be pre­pared for a very long pe­ri­od of po­lit­i­cal pow­er plays by the main char­ac­ters in the PP and the now op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.

The PP should be un­der no il­lu­sion that the PNM which has al­ways boast­ed that it was the par­ty of gov­er­nance, is like a wound­ed li­on and is look­ing at every op­por­tu­ni­ty to bare its fangs at the rul­ing coali­tion in the hopes of scor­ing body punch­es wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. I how­ev­er, be­lieve a knock­out out punch would be hard to score giv­en the re­cent past his­to­ry of the PNM in gov­ern­ment, and the tremen­dous amount of good­will the peo­ple have re­posed in the PP, more so in the Prime Min­is­ter Ka­mala Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of Works Austin Jack Warn­er. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some of the ut­ter­ances by PNM of­fi­cials in and out of the par­lia­ment have not helped the par­ty on the road to re­cap­tur­ing the con­fi­dence of the elec­torate, ex­cept of course for its own hard core bunch of sup­port­ers. I take no plea­sure in say­ing this, but the re­sponse by op­po­si­tion leader Kei­th Row­ley to a state­ment made at the re­cent Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence in Ja­maica by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has not en­deared him to any­one ex­cept, as I have said, the hard core PNM-un­til-ah-dead crowd. I re­fer to the as­tute ob­ser­va­tion made by the TT's Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar that Trinidad and To­ba­go was no longer to be viewed by our Cari­com sis­ters and broth­ers as an ATM card.

And she was so right.

No doubt our head of gov­ern­ment hav­ing tak­en over less than two months ago from the Man­ning-led PNM regime, would have by now been briefed on the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go's trea­sury. She would al­so know if we can con­tin­ue to dish out our pat­ri­mo­ny to re­gion­al coun­tries as our im­me­di­ate past Prime Min­is­ter did–left, right and cen­tre. Some said he want­ed to be crowned the god­fa­ther of the Caribbean...dol­ing out our oil bo­nan­za and con­struct­ing su­per large ed­i­fices to his lega­cy, while ne­glect­ing to sup­ply cit­i­zens with the ba­sic fa­cil­i­ties and ameni­ties a coun­try with the amount of mon­ey we had un­der his watch, should be en­joy­ing to­day. But no soon­er had she made the ATM anal­o­gy, and that there should be greater ac­count­abil­i­ty in the dis­burse­ment of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Fund, did a very good pal of Patrick Man­ning, none oth­er than the Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent, one Gon­za­les, made what many pa­tri­ots con­sid­ered a very un­seem­ly and in­ju­di­cious re­sponse. He ac­cused her of be­ing "out of or­der" if TT should not con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the funds as if Per­sad-Biseessar said any­thing of the sort.

If that to­tal­ly un­couth, un­friend­ly and undiplo­mat­ic ex­change was not bad enough, in jumped our loy­al leader, the op­po­si­tion Kei­th Row­ley, and God knows how he ar­rived at that con­clu­sion, who moaned that Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ATM re­mark could dam­age this coun­try's re­la­tions with our Cari­com neigh­bours. To boost this flawed ar­gu­ment he ven­tured that it could al­so cause un­em­ploy­ment as a re­sult of trad­ing re­la­tions be­ing soured and the loss of lo­cal jobs. I don't know what Dr Row­ley was think­ing about when he made that com­ment...cer­tain­ly not about Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­ter­ests. When his state­ment is tak­en in its to­tal­i­ty one could not help but de­duce he was sim­ply play­ing to his PNM con­stituen­cy.

In oth­er words, say things the PNM devo­tees would be pleased to hear; "pong the PM..."

No rea­son­able per­son can take that po­si­tion se­ri­ous­ly and in­stead of join­ing the cho­rus of nay say­ers, Row­ley should adopt a more prac­ti­cal ap­proach to the dis­charge of his du­ties as leader of the op­po­si­tion. He must know that you don't op­pose for op­pos­ing sake. We pass that stage, marn. How could he join with out­siders to be­lit­tle our Prime Min­is­ter? Has Row­ley for­got­ten that when na­tion­als of TT go to some of these coun­tries mer­chants and oth­er re­tail­ers blunt­ly refuse to ac­cept our cur­ren­cy? They are tak­ing our dol­lars to im­prove their lot while at the same time em­bar­rass­ing us say­ing our mon­ey is "pa­per" and they won't touch it. Row­ley should be talk­ing about that hu­mil­i­a­tion be­ing a source of dis­re­spect and in­grat­i­tude to Trinidad and To­ba­go, who, has been a more than gen­er­ous bene­fac­tor to these na­tions. Gon­za­les and the rest of the OECS lead­ers are mourn­ing the loss of their good friend Man­ning, who had planned by the hook or the crook, to cook up some kind of po­lit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic fed­er­a­tion with these coun­tries.

So with the for­mer prime min­is­ter no longer in the dri­ver's seat in Port-of-Spain those lead­ers have seen their gravy train run out of steam...abrupt­ly. They were lin­ing up, eye­ing more TT largesse based on the pro­posed "fed­er­a­tion" of which our pop­u­la­tion was not even con­sult­ed. Is Gon­za­les tak­ing med­i­cine for his good friend's "ill­ness" brought on by the loss of pow­er on May 24?