To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?For any­one look­ing on care­ful­ly at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) ral­ly in Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day, it would have been clear that the con­flict be­tween the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty, Patrick Man­ning and Dr Kei­th Row­ley is far from over.

In fact, in the con­text of the PNM seek­ing to make a sig­nif­i­cant and col­lec­tive im­pact on the live and tele­vi­sion au­di­ences that it is plac­ing its dif­fer­ences be­hind it, the pub­lic show­ing of the con­flict be­tween the two ma­jor fig­ures in the par­ty could not have been wel­comed. In mak­ing his way to the plat­form when called as the can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin West, Dr Row­ley seemed to have gone out of his way to take up a stem of bal­isi­er and wave it to the crowd, telling any­one who was in­ter­est­ed that his loy­al­ty is with the par­ty and per­haps not the leader. On re­turn­ing to his seat, Dr Row­ley avoid­ed walk­ing and greet­ing the line of the par­ty hi­er­ar­chy, with the po­lit­i­cal leader along the way, and on­ly seem­ing­ly as an af­ter­thought stretched a hand to Mr Man­ning and chair­man Con­rad Enill. In­deed, he would have had to walk di­rect­ly pass them if he had cho­sen to ig­nore them.

One news­pa­per pho­to­graph in which the Prime Min­is­ter is shak­ing Dr Row­ley's hand but avoid­ing his eyes told an­oth­er sto­ry of Mr Man­ning's own re­ac­tion to his for­mer deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and ma­jor plat­form speak­er. And that leads to what has sub­se­quent­ly come out: Dr Row­ley has con­firmed re­ports that he was asked to speak on the plat­form but de­clined.

The Diego Mar­tin West can­di­date gave no de­tails as to why he de­clined. How­ev­er, one re­port was that he was giv­en a mere four min­utes at the plat­form and he may have felt that to be in­ad­e­quate to his needs and his stature in the par­ty. How­ev­er, there are those who are al­so say­ing that Dr Row­ley, hav­ing bro­ken the sto­ry of Calder Hart and Ude­cott be­ing out of the con­trol of the Cab­i­net and the Prime Min­is­ter, would find it dif­fi­cult to in good con­science go on a plat­form to de­fend same. All of this rais­es the larg­er ques­tion as to what role Dr Row­ley will play in the cam­paign as plat­form speak­er. Asked by re­porters to com­ment on the mat­ter of his ap­pear­ing on na­tion­al plat­forms, Dr Row­ley said he will soon re­spond to that. Per­haps the plan is to do so when he ad­dress­es his own plat­form sched­uled for Thurs­day evening in the Diego Mar­tin con­stituen­cy.

When ques­tioned on the sub­ject by re­porters on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning said he had no prob­lem with his neme­sis as a speak­er on the plat­form.

As to the need for and pop­u­lar­i­ty of Dr Row­ley, when he ar­rived on stage at Wood­ford Square his re­cep­tion was sec­ond to none. And if there were any ques­tions about his con­fir­ma­tion as can­di­date, such a thought must have im­me­di­ate­ly dis­ap­peared from the minds of any­one har­bour­ing them. He clear­ly is not a Pen­ny Beck­les or Pe­ter Tay­lor who can be eas­i­ly got rid of with­out con­se­quences. So the larg­er ques­tion re­mains: What is go­ing to hap­pen in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Dr Row­ley and Mr Man­ning post-elec­tion? If the PNM wins, it would be dif­fi­cult to see how Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning will ap­point him to his Cab­i­net, too much wa­ter hav­ing flowed be­neath that bridge. If the PNM los­es, the chal­lenge for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the par­ty will cer­tain­ly ma­te­ri­alise with Dr Row­ley at the head of such a chal­lenge.

The lat­ter may find jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in an elec­tion loss to mount an­oth­er quest for the lead­er­ship over a man who would have twice called ear­ly polls and lost the gov­ern­ment.