To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

If "not now" for a prime min­is­te­r­i­al de­bate, be­fore the elec­torate choos­es the per­son and his/her par­ty best suit­ed and equipped to gov­ern, can in­cum­bent Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning tell the coun­try when would be the most ap­pro­pri­ate time for such a de­bate. The Prime Min­is­ter com­pound­ed the il­log­ic of his state­ment about now not be­ing the most ap­pro­pri­ate time by telling re­porters "af­ter, af­ter" the elec­tion. This news­pa­per must con­fess that the log­ic of a de­bate af­ter the elec­tion, af­ter the elec­torate has made a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the gov­ern­ment it wants in of­fice, es­capes us. Mr Man­ning was how­ev­er cor­rect to say in the in­ter­view on Tues­day evening that a prime min­is­te­r­i­al de­bate will not on­ly al­low the watch­ing com­mu­ni­ty to make judg­ments based on log­ic and the fac­tu­al­i­ty of an­swers:

"It has noth­ing to do with the an­swers you give or any such thing, you know, it has noth­ing to do with that." Yes Prime Min­is­ter, a tele­vised na­tion­al de­bate will al­low the elec­torate to make judg­ments on the char­ac­ter of the in­di­vid­ual, truth­ful­ness, sin­cer­i­ty of pur­pose, com­mit­ment and a range of oth­er mat­ters which are all im­por­tant in­sights in­to the char­ac­ter of the in­di­vid­ual that is seek­ing to lead the coun­try. As to his oth­er po­si­tion ex­em­pli­fied in the short in­ter­ac­tion with the group of re­porters, it is clear that Mr Man­ning was fo­cused on self-preser­va­tion and not the wel­fare of the coun­try when he asked the rhetor­i­cal ques­tion: "What do I have to gain from a de­bate with Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar? Noth­ing to gain, noth­ing to gain by that." Prime Min­is­ter, you may be right here again.

The rel­e­vant ques­tion how­ev­er is: what does the coun­try have to gain from such a de­bate? Among oth­er things, the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion will be able to get first-hand re­spons­es from Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning on sev­er­al per­ti­nent is­sues: his stew­ard­ship of the econ­o­my, his man­age­ment, or fail­ure to man­age, the bil­lion-dol­lar state con­struc­tion pro­gramme, whether or not he made a cam­paign pact with Abu Bakr to grant the Mus­lim leader land at Mu­cu­rapo in ex­change for his cam­paign sup­port, the ob­vi­ous fail­ures of his suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to make the slight­est im­pact on the growth of the crim­i­nal cul­ture, his Gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of the en­er­gy port­fo­lio, in­clud­ing the in­abil­i­ty so far to put a tax regime in place to en­cour­age new in­vest­ment, the re­al rea­sons be­hind the de­nial by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to the Amer­i­can po­lit­i­cal strate­gist to en­ter the coun­try, the ben­e­fits, re­al and pro­posed, for the ex­pen­di­ture of over $1 bil­lion to host two in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mits last year, and on and on.

Added to these is­sues, there is the in­abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to meet the so­cial needs of the pop­u­la­tion with ad­e­quate sup­plies of wa­ter and a sound health sys­tem. Cer­tain­ly, the struc­ture and the in­di­vid­u­als put for­ward by the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce for the de­bates, in­clud­ing hav­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly re­spect­ed Sir Shri­dath Ram­phal and the ho­n­ourable re­tired judge Ul­ric Cross as mod­er­a­tors, can­not be fault­ed. Those who may think that the re­fusal by a sit­ting prime min­is­ter of an elec­tion de­bate is a prac­tice on­ly of Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning, we re­mind them that when he was prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day al­so re­fused to de­bate with the then Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, one Patrick Man­ning, who was most ready to then de­bate. De­nial by Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to the coun­try to ma­ture in­to a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture which makes vi­tal de­ci­sions based on rig­or­ous ar­gu­ments leaves the cul­ture open to be­ing swayed by emo­tion, his­tor­i­cal loy­al­ties, de­pen­dence on pri­mal pulls such as race and the con­tin­ued fos­ter­ing of the cul­ture of hand­outs from the Trea­sury in an elec­tion sea­son.