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Let me start by stat­ing that I hold no brief for Bas­deo Pan­day. But I am be­fud­dled by all the hys­te­ria over his ob­struc­tion­ist tac­tics in the Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

Isn't this the same gen­tle­man who said that the job of the Op­po­si­tion is to op­pose? Ask the PNM how easy it was to get op­po­si­tion agree­ment for any­thing when he was at the helm of the UNC. Even on mat­ters that he had pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to sup­port. This was es­pe­cial­ly so when a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty was re­quired. And now some par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who glee­ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in his ear­li­er ob­struc­tion­ism are cry­ing long tears of sur­prise.

Well, there is an oft-re­peat­ed say­ing that "what goes around comes around." I hope that the present Op­po­si­tion Leader takes care­ful note of this. Things tend to "come around" very sud­den­ly.

I al­so hold no brief for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, but he too seems to be en­tan­gled by the hys­ter­i­cal mood of the mo­ment. His prob­lem is that he has an ad­vis­er. So what? some may ask.

Didn't all pre­vi­ous Prime Min­is­ters have ad­vis­ers? Some of them we know, and oth­ers dwelled in a shad­owy back­ground. The wife of one pre­vi­ous Prime Min­is­ter was re­put­ed to be one of his chief ad­vis­ers. An­oth­er de­creed that all his min­is­ters should have non-elect­ed, non-pub­lic ad­vis­ers. This was all very trans­par­ent since they were paid from pub­lic funds, and had of­fices and staff, al­so paid from pub­lic funds.

Even kings, who claimed to have been in­vest­ed with di­vine pow­ers, had ad­vis­ers–re­li­gious, sec­u­lar and oth­er­wise. And I make bold to state that all heads of state or of gov­ern­ment have ad­vis­ers. Oh, I get it now. Man­ning has a "spir­i­tu­al" ad­vis­er. Ap­par­ent­ly peo­ple in­volved in pub­lic, sec­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties should not have spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­ers, or at the very least they should be hid­den from pub­lic view.

That is why there was such a hue and cry when one for­mer Prime Min­is­ter placed an ob­ject on the grounds of the PM's res­i­dence that is re­put­ed to have pro­vid­ed spir­i­tu­al pro­tec­tion and in­spi­ra­tion (ad­vice?). Well, what goes around sure­ly comes around.

George Box­ill

Low­er San­ta Cruz