To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Ob­vi­ous­ly not want­i­ng to al­low the Op­po­si­tion to do too much dam­age dur­ing the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion de­bate which was sched­uled for to­day, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning sought to en­gage in dam­age con­trol by opt­ing to have the Pres­i­dent dis­solve the Par­lia­ment mid­night Thurs­day. And there is quite an amount of po­lit­i­cal sense in adopt­ing such a strat­e­gy: It has stopped the Op­po­si­tion which would have gone full pelt to slam in­to Mr Man­ning and his gov­ern­ment with­out con­straint, know­ing their state­ments would have the pro­tec­tion of the Par­lia­ment. The de­nial by the Ag Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er of per­mis­sion for the PNM to bring out a mul­ti­tude of its sup­port­ers to em­brace their po­lit­i­cal leader, he hav­ing called the elec­tion, must al­so have per­suad­ed po­lit­i­cal leader Mr Man­ning to scut­tle the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion de­bate.

It would un­doubt­ed­ly have made good me­dia cov­er­age with pic­tures and sound­bites and copy hav­ing the fol­low­ers cre­ate an at­mos­phere of con­fi­dence at the start of the cam­paign. The PNM po­lit­i­cal leader must now seek an al­ter­na­tive op­por­tu­ni­ty to make his big an­nounce­ment. In the cir­cum­stances, there­fore, it clear­ly was in the in­ter­est of the Prime Min­is­ter to take this pro­pa­gan­da tool away from the Op­po­si­tion. In any case, the whole point of Mr Man­ning hold­ing an elec­tion now with just over half of his con­sti­tu­tion­al term still to come is all about stop­ping the rot from fur­ther erod­ing his po­lit­i­cal sup­port. Now T&T's Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion is clear that a gen­er­al elec­tion "shall be held at such time with­in three months af­ter every dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment," so there is no ques­tion of pro­long­ing the elec­tion. For the Prime Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, call­ing the elec­tion is the easy first move. The ground for crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment has been made even more fer­tile with the re­lease of the re­port of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

There is suf­fi­cient in the re­port to feed the grist of the po­lit­i­cal mills for a long time to come, so the ex­pec­ta­tion must be that the op­po­si­tion par­ties will seek to make full use of the ma­te­r­i­al. The Gov­ern­ment, on the oth­er hand, as made clear by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, will use as its de­fence that it es­tab­lished the com­mis­sion, that it ini­ti­at­ed crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and fired the Ude­cott board and has re­leased the re­port of the com­mis­sion for pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, but that the in­for­ma­tion in the doc­u­ment can­not be con­sid­ered as ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing on the part of any­one. It is a strat­e­gy to ward off at­tack. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, for the rul­ing par­ty in an elec­tion sea­son, there are no sa­cred cows that will be re­spect­ed by an at­tack­ing force which will make as if the fi­nal court of law has al­ready ad­ju­di­cat­ed and con­vict­ed all and sundry named in the re­port.

But most im­por­tant­ly, out­side of what­ev­er ei­ther po­lit­i­cal par­ty will seek to prop­a­gate, is the like­ly re­ac­tion of elec­tors and the gen­er­al pub­lic. One of the great­est chal­lenges to be faced by the PNM is that of cred­i­bil­i­ty to make a cyn­i­cal pop­u­la­tion be­lieve oth­er­wise than what seems very ap­par­ent from the Uff Com­mis­sion re­port–the ex­trav­a­gance dis­played at every turn by the Gov­ern­ment, the ar­ro­gance of its gov­er­nance style. Large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion, even amongst those who sup­port the rul­ing par­ty and Gov­ern­ment, have de­vel­oped strong feel­ings to­wards the al­le­ga­tions of the mass spend­ing, cor­rup­tion and the im­po­tence and per­haps more of the Gov­ern­ment in all of this. At the same time, how­ev­er, it is not go­ing to be easy for the Op­po­si­tion, even with so much am­mu­ni­tion ly­ing around. The forces will first have to strike an agree­ment that could per­suade peo­ple they could be a se­ri­ous al­ter­na­tive gov­ern­ment. It is go­ing to be a bruis­ing cam­paign.