To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

For long months since the PNM formed the Op­po­si­tion par­ty, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has re­mained silent in pub­lic dis­cus­sions and ab­sent from his par­ty's in­ter­nal pol­i­tics. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive for San Fer­nan­do East end­ed his self-im­posed, six-month long coven­try on Fri­day evening with a live­ly and prac­ticed con­tri­bu­tion to Par­lia­ment, en­hanced with the show and tell im­agery now so beloved of the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port. Wise­ly, Patrick Man­ning sought to give the lie to ru­mours cir­cu­lat­ing about his sta­tus and in­ten­tions with­in the par­ty, not­ing that he in­tend­ed to serve his en­tire five-year term on the Op­po­si­tion bench­es. His ab­sence from par­ty meet­ings and cau­cus­es was, he said, in­tend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the smooth trans­fer of au­thor­i­ty and the process of re­fo­cus­ing of the PNM in the wake of their elec­tion de­feat.

Dur­ing his long months of sto­ic si­lence, the for­mer PNM po­lit­i­cal leader has been sub­ject to vir­tu­al­ly re­lent­less ac­cu­sa­tions and vil­i­fi­ca­tion from his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and there are still a num­ber of ques­tions that re­main to be an­swered about his stew­ard­ship of not just his par­ty, but in­deed the en­tire coun­try dur­ing his last term in of­fice as Prime Min­is­ter. In the face of his si­lence, how­ev­er, some of the ac­cu­sa­tions and ques­tions have de­gen­er­at­ed in­to pro­gres­sive­ly less art­ful ver­bal jabs, cul­mi­nat­ing in Fri­day's speech by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Sandy, which re­ferred to a "man­ic man" with a "sick mind�" as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the re­cent rev­e­la­tions re­gard­ing ap­par­ent­ly wan­ton wire­tap­ping in the name of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Bill, Man­ning dis­missed the Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter's speech as light­weight and warned that the bill, as it was pre­sent­ed, would neuter the in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing ca­pac­i­ties of lo­cal law en­force­ment. There was no mis­tak­ing the ro­bust and un­apolo­getic tone of MP Patrick Man­ning dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Bill. Man­ning is the longest serv­ing mem­ber of Par­lia­ment still ac­tive in the House, and it stands to rea­son that his con­tri­bu­tions would car­ry the weight and au­thor­i­ty of that ex­pe­ri­ence. Still, it was hard to miss the ro­bust­ness of this first ad­dress to the House in months, and his ev­i­dent de­sire to drop the kind of ver­bal bombs that make head­lines and put po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents in­to the role of re­spon­ders.

At times, Man­ning seemed to be reach­ing out on­to par­tic­u­lar­ly thin ground in his state­ments, at one point cit­ing the post­script of a schol­ar­ly book on Trinidad and To­ba­go, Old Board House, as a ref­er­ence point for a claim of me­dia bias in the last elec­tion. The ag­gres­sive­ness of his ac­cu­sa­tions, even­tu­al­ly led the Speak­er of the House, on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, to ask the Mem­ber for San Fer­nan­do East to with­draw his state­ments or, pre­sum­ably, to sub­stan­ti­ate them. In each case, Man­ning with­drew his com­ments, claim­ing "duress." Now that Patrick Man­ning has seen fit to break his 26-week si­lence in Par­lia­ment as well as pro­fes­sion­al po­lit­i­cal life in such grand style, it would al­so be en­tire­ly ap­pro­pri­ate for him to be­gin to frame equal­ly elo­quent and rev­e­la­to­ry about the many ques­tions that have been raised about his po­lit­i­cal man­age­ment of the Gov­ern­ment over the two and a half years of his last term in of­fice. There are a num­ber of ques­tions raised by the PP Gov­ern­ment that have gone unan­swered since they have as­sumed of­fice and many of those ques­tions are most ap­pro­pri­ate­ly an­swered by the man who so proud­ly and con­fi­dent­ly led the PNM un­til the ear­ly elec­tions of May 2010.