To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

A mem­ber of the pub­lic con­tribut­ing to the dis­cours­es of a be­lea­guered Prime Min­is­ter has not­ed: Last week it was war with the con­trac­tors. This week the con­flict is with drug deal­ers. Who will it be next week and the weeks lead­ing up to the lo­cal gov­ern­ment (per­haps even gen­er­al elec­tion) polls? On the fight of this week and Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's con­tentions about drug deal­ers go­ing af­ter him, it is suf­fi­cient to note that the drug deal­ers have been suc­cess­ful­ly pur­su­ing their trade for the last cou­ple decades, un­car­ing re­al­ly about what gov­ern­ments do or don't do. Is it that the fear now be­ing demon­strat­ed by the drug deal­ers, ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, is a re­sult of the tele­vi­sion ad of the re­cent­ly ac­quired fast pa­trol boats?

Coun­tries such as the USA, Britain and oth­er far more re­sourced states have dis­cov­ered that, notwith­stand­ing their as­sem­bled ar­ma­da, drug deal­ers con­tin­ue their scourge un­de­terred. Why are they to be put off by the as­sem­blage of a few ves­sels and tech­no­log­i­cal gad­getry in the hands of a regime that has failed mis­er­ably to stem the drug trade and crime over near­ly a decade? But the para­noia and ob­ses­sion with his sense of self-im­por­tance and his abil­i­ty to sell any­thing to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty goes deep­er. Does Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning re­al­ly be­lieve that as a means of di­vert­ing at­ten­tion away from the in­ad­e­qua­cies of his gov­ern­ment on a range of is­sues in­clud­ing lack of trans­paren­cy, un­suc­cess­ful ac­tion against or­gan­ised crime, fi­nan­cial waste and flawed eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions such as host­ing bil­lion-dol­lar con­fer­ences he could sim­ply mount a plat­form, pick out "en­e­mies" and pa­rade against them to si­lence the dis­sat­is­fac­tion peo­ple have with him and his Gov­ern­ment? If he does, he is re­al­ly liv­ing an il­lu­sion.

Com­men­ta­tors who have likened Mr Man­ning and Mr Pan­day to two sides to the same coin may have been right. In the midst of his At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's fight with Chief Jus­tice Michael de la Bastide for ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol of the ju­di­cia­ry, which the ho­n­ourable CJ in­ter­pret­ed to be an at­tempt to get con­trol of that arm of gov­ern­ment, then Prime Min­is­ter Pan­day railed against one and all. The said "drug deal­ers" came in for a bash­ing; al­so the me­dia, who were said to be in league with an un­known mafia; and the judges too got a broad­side from the then Prime Min­is­ter. "No one who at­tacked my Gov­ern­ment would re­main un­scathed," snarled Mr Pan­day. Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning seems to have adopt­ed the strat­e­gy with mi­nor vari­a­tions. Then there is his con­tin­u­ing boasts about know­ing who the drug deal­ers are, who "Mr Big" is, all of this knowl­edge with­out be­ing able to use the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus of the State to even bring them to court. In­stead of be­ing a boost to the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment, the emp­ty rhetoric serves as an in­dict­ment against the Prime Min­is­ter's ad­min­is­tra­tion.

It seems clear that Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning is suf­fer­ing from an at­tack of a po­lit­i­cal virus that af­flicts a leader who has in­evitably to call an elec­tion but is dead­ly afraid of the elec­torate. Far more pro­duc­tive was the qui­et com­mit­ment by Mr Man­ning's se­nior min­is­ter, Lenny Saith, to re­vise and im­ple­ment leg­is­la­tion to form a pol­i­cy for pro­cure­ment in the pub­lic sec­tor. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that the white pa­per on pro­cure­ment has been left to gath­er dust for five years while Ude­cott was al­lowed to play with bil­lions of dol­lars, this news­pa­per is sug­gest­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning that tak­ing such con­struc­tive ac­tion would be far more pro­duc­tive than the Mon­day night mad­ness of con­struct­ing en­e­mies out of thin air.