SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj says Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley may be lack­ing the skills to trans­form the PNM in­to a vi­able po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty."The chal­lenge is not so much whether Dr Row­ley can hold the PNM to­geth­er, it's whether Dr Row­ley will be al­lowed to trans­form the PNM to be a vi­able po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion that can form gov­ern­ment above and be­yond its his­tor­i­cal elec­toral sup­port base," he said.Ram­samooj said the skills re­quired to broad­en the PNM's base as well as to keep the par­ty co­he­sive in in­sti­tu­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion "seems to be some­what daunt­ing" to Row­ley.

He said there ap­peared to be frac­tures with­in the PNM and mem­bers of the par­ty seemed to be up­set with Row­ley's de­ci­sion-mak­ing process at the par­lia­men­tary cau­cus lev­el and on the ground.Ram­samooj said the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) may well be fo­cus­ing on PNM con­stituen­cies. He said the Gov­ern­ment was faced with one of two op­tions by the time the next elec­tion comes around..."ei­ther run­ning as one mono­lith­ic, uni­tary po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion called the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, or the part­ners could go back to their re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties and con­test as in­di­vid­ual par­ties."

He said with­in that frame­work, "one would ex­pect that the COP's am­bi­tion would be to widen its elec­toral sup­port base and its winnabil­i­ty in con­stituen­cies along the East-West Cor­ri­dor."The PP, if it has to demon­strate growth, must have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to ex­pand its winnable con­stituen­cies," Ram­samooj said."Con­stituen­cies such as Point Fortin, as well as con­stituen­cies in the Diego Mar­tin ar­eas, will in­deed be prone to a PP part­ner­ship po­lit­i­cal at­tack against the PNM."He said the the PNM un­der Row­ley must be able to keep its sup­port base and at­tract new mem­bers.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­samooj, Row­ley was at­tempt­ing to widen the ap­peal of the op­po­si­tion par­ty by hav­ing peo­ple of dif­fer­ent eth­nic back­grounds in its hi­er­ar­chy."Whether that trans­fers to sup­port in the ground is still left to be seen," he said.Ram­samooj said po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions had his­tor­i­cal­ly drawn sup­port along cer­tain eth­nic lines. "At the top of the in­sti­tu­tions, there ap­pears a need for a bal­ance," he said."What is clear­ly ev­i­dent now is that po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try need to de­vel­op a dif­fer­ent ap­proach as to how they are struc­tured and how they builds their par­ties from the bot­tom."