To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Fif­teen years ago, younger and less po­lit­i­cal­ly savvy Patrick Man­ning called a Gen­er­al Elec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go a full year be­fore it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. He lost that elec­tion. On Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning stopped short on­ly of de­clar­ing a date for a Gen­er­al Elec­tion, as he sent a clear mes­sage to the PNM faith­ful at a spe­cial con­ven­tion os­ten­si­bly to ho­n­our the life and work of the par­ty's founder Dr Er­ic Williams, that gen­er­al elec­tions would be on their agen­da im­me­di­ate­ly. In that speech, the Prime Min­is­ter sound­ed more like a politi­cian re­hears­ing for the podi­um on the cam­paign trail than a man look­ing back at the lega­cy of Dr Williams. It was a sur­pris­ing move and one that will stim­u­late some heat­ed po­lit­i­cal analy­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly since a gen­er­al elec­tion is not due un­til 2012. The strat­e­gy he hint­ed at in his Ch­aguara­mas ad­dress sug­gest­ed a will­ing­ness, even an ea­ger­ness to push a gen­er­al elec­tion ahead of lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions as part of an ap­par­ent ef­fort to de­fine his man­date for lead­er­ship.

But the Prime Min­is­ter finds him­self in cu­ri­ous cir­cum­stances right now, and two years is a long time in pol­i­tics when it's no longer clear whether your lead­er­ship en­joys de­fin­i­tive sup­port. On April 9, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to lead a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter in Par­lia­ment, the sec­ond that he will face in his cur­rent term of of­fice. He faced the first in Sep­tem­ber 2008, a mo­tion pi­lot­ed by then Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj. That mo­tion failed in the face of the Gov­ern­ment's 26 seat ma­jor­i­ty in the House against an Op­po­si­tion pres­ence of 15. In the face of the rul­ing par­ty's con­tin­u­ing ma­jor­i­ty and the like­ly fail­ure of the mo­tion, the Op­po­si­tion's no-con­fi­dence mo­tion sig­nals a far greater than po­lit­i­cal­ly nor­mal dis­ap­proval of the Prime Min­is­ter's per­for­mance while invit­ing mem­bers on the oth­er side of the floor to join them in that ex­pres­sion.

Out­side of Par­lia­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter has par­tic­i­pat­ed in an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of coun­try­wide tours and cot­tage meet­ings, un­prece­dent­ed that is, out­side of a for­mal elec­tion cam­paign. So on the sur­face of it, there is much in these pub­lic en­gage­ments to sup­port PM Man­ning's claim that he is ful­ly aware of the sen­ti­ments of the pub­lic re­gard­ing his gov­er­nance and the per­for­mance of his team of Min­is­ters. In a star­tling­ly short time, the suc­cess­es so pub­licly rel­ished in 2009 with the two sum­mits have turned out to have a bit­ter and lin­ger­ing af­ter­taste. The tri­umphant open­ing of NA­PA for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing has now de­volved in­to a vig­or­ous backpedal­ing on ex­pec­ta­tions for the fa­cil­i­ty, and an ac­knowl­edge­ment that some mon­ey will need to be spent to im­ple­ment ad­just­ments. That ad­mis­sion was all but forced out of the Min­istry of Cul­ture by a grow­ing groundswell of con­cerns about the prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions of the vir­tu­al­ly un­touched Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre.

A mas­sive flag that cost tax­pay­ers $2 mil­lion flut­ters like a blood­ied al­ba­tross above the sta­di­um, a cel­e­bra­tion of na­tion­al pride that no­body asked for. With two sum­mits down and an eco­nom­ic fo­rum to come, there re­mains no sub­stan­tial val­ue ac­count­ing of the re­turns, re­al or an­tic­i­pat­ed, from these mas­sive ex­er­cis­es in pub­lic spend­ing and po­lit­i­cal hubris. The Tarou­ba Sta­di­um, a fa­cil­i­ty that must give crick­et leg­end Bri­an Lara night­mares, re­mains un­com­mis­sioned years af­ter it was sched­uled to be pressed in­to use. While it is clear that the Gov­ern­ment has had some re­al suc­cess­es, which in­clude the CDAP pro­gramme and the Wa­ter Taxi ser­vice, these and oth­er hu­mil­i­at­ing, epic fail­ures re­main sub­stan­tial­ly un­ac­knowl­edged save for fur­ther spin and acts of po­lit­i­cal sleight of hand like the re­cent­ly an­nounced big spend on Laven­tille.

With his op­po­si­tion danc­ing ever clos­er to a mean­ing­ful courtship of pur­pose and his adamant­ly in­ex­pe­ri­enced team pro­vid­ing lit­tle sup­port for his rhetoric, the Prime Min­is­ter must feel it crit­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary to con­sol­i­date and mo­bilise his sup­port while re­fresh­ing his man­date with the pub­lic. The sur­pris­es from the PNM's po­lit­i­cal leader, the pub­lic may rea­son­ably ex­pect, are far from over.