To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning may not be wrong when he de­scribed him­self as be­ing the "most vil­i­fied" Prime Min­is­ter that this coun­try has ever ex­pe­ri­enced. But he should not leave the is­sue there. The Prime Min­is­ter owes it to the coun­try and his lega­cy to com­mit to some deep in­tro­spec­tion dur­ing which he should ask him­self why his style of lead­er­ship and his man­age­ment of the coun­try en­gen­der such neg­a­tive feel­ings among so many peo­ple. There can be lit­tle doubt that dur­ing the pe­ri­od of his sec­ond turn at lead­ing this of­ten frac­tious coun­try, the stan­dard of liv­ing of a ma­jor­i­ty of T&T's cit­i­zens has im­proved–some­times ex­po­nen­tial­ly.

In his in­tro­spec­tion, Mr Man­ning should seek to un­der­stand why he re­ceives so lit­tle sym­pa­thy, ap­pre­ci­a­tion or re­spect when his lead­er­ship has been re­spon­si­ble for poli­cies that have pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed thou­sands of peo­ple through "free" ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, heav­i­ly sub­sidised homes, in­ter­nal trans­port, as well as free phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and a wide va­ri­ety of so­cial safe­ty net trans­fers. To the point where Mr Man­ning ob­vi­ous­ly feels that he has lost the moral man­date to lead and that he should re­turn to the elec­torate for re­newed val­i­da­tion. But if the Prime Min­is­ter does not un­der­stand, there are a few "mosts" as to why this vil­i­fi­ca­tion of a man and his gov­ern­ment, who on­ly a short 29 months ago was giv­en such a com­mand­ing lead in terms of seats–26-15 over the op­po­si­tion forces.

First, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning may be the most dis­con­nect­ed leader the coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced. He has adopt­ed the at­ti­tude that he knows it all, rarely coun­te­nanc­ing op­pos­ing views on mat­ters that af­fect the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. There are dozens of ex­am­ples of such in­stances. He chose to char­ac­terise his at­ti­tude re­cent­ly as "strong lead­er­ship." Even with­in his own par­ty, he has been the most wil­ful leader, elim­i­nat­ing any­one who would demon­strate the gump­tion to op­pose him. This at­ti­tude con­tin­ues in his quest to get rid of Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who ac­cord­ing to her con­stituents has been an ex­cel­lent MP. He has been the most un­suc­cess­ful leader in de­vel­op­ing the hu­man and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture out­side of the city cen­tres. Ev­i­dence of this state­ment is the last-minute elec­tion car­rots dan­gled be­fore Laven­tille and the health sec­tor.

Mr Man­ning has been the most un­suc­cess­ful Prime Min­is­ter in pay­ing at­ten­tion to some, but not all, of the ba­sic needs of some of T&T's cit­i­zens, such as en­sur­ing that a high­er per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion has ac­cess to a dai­ly, reg­u­lar and pre­dictable sup­ply of wa­ter. In the con­text of his ad­min­is­tra­tion's ac­cess to such huge fi­nan­cial re­sources, Mr Man­ning has al­so been T&T's most un­suc­cess­ful leader in di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my away from its his­tor­i­cal de­pen­dence on one in­dus­try. Mr Man­ning has been the most ex­trav­a­gant user of those fi­nan­cial re­sources–and his fail­ure to rein in the run­away horse that Ude­cott be­came must be count­ed heav­i­ly against him. His sin­gle most ex­trav­a­gant ex­pen­di­tures with­out ap­par­ent re­turn has been this coun­try's host­ing of two in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mits last year.

Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning has al­so been the most un­suc­cess­ful in hold­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, hid­ing be­hind the need for re­form. Well he has al­so been the most un­suc­cess­ful in re­form­ing the sys­tem over the longest pe­ri­od of time–four years have gone by with­out the polls. At the meet­ing in St Au­gus­tine on Mon­day, Hazel Man­ning came clean in talk­ing about the loud clam­our against the ad­min­is­tra­tion forc­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to call an ear­ly elec­tion. But she too must ask her­self why the every-Mon­day-morn­ing protests. The arousal of the pop­u­la­tion to protest and crit­i­cise the Prime Min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment when their needs are not met and when a gov­ern­ment seeks to make high-hand­ed de­ci­sions on cru­cial mat­ters with­out con­sul­ta­tion is re­al­ly an in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment.

It should warn Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Mr Dook­er­an that even if ei­ther were to win the elec­tion by a land­slide, he/she would not have the un­chal­lenged right to ig­nore the pop­u­la­tion. "Peo­ple ent tak­ing dat so, peo­ple ent tak­ing dat" is a re­frain from Bro Re­sis­tance that needs to be heed­ed.