Ke­van Gibbs

In the past six months, many po­lit­i­cal know-it-alls claimed for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning's si­lence was part of a mas­ter plan. Af­ter all, what was be­com­ing an un­com­fort­able si­lence from the San Fer­nan­do East MP must have been be­cause he fan­cied him­self a come­back kid that would re­claim the lead­er­ship of Patrick's Na­tion­al Move­ment.?

A plan which would prove that the cur­rent Op­po­si­tion leader was ac­tu­al­ly all bark and no bite, de­serv­ing of the treat­ment dished out to him dur­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.Re­al­i­ty check!All the spec­u­la­tion, how­ev­er, came to a crash­ing end when his si­lence was fi­nal­ly bro­ken.It was amaz­ing to see the one-time rebel of the Par­lia­ment, who now sits as the Speak­er, hav­ing to re­quest time af­ter time, that Man­ning re­tract his state­ments and apol­o­gise for his out­landish claims.

He sound­ed more like a fad­ing star, will­ing to say any­thing to get at­ten­tion, rather than try­ing to re­claim his for­mer stand­ing in the Par­lia­ment.Start­ing well, both PNM and Part­ner­ship sup­port­ers alike were all look­ing for­ward to what the longest stand­ing mem­ber had to say.How­ev­er, his un­found­ed claims geared to­wards the Prime Min­is­ter build­ing a $150 mil­lion home and talk about the now aban­doned church in the Heights of Gua­napo, took away from the cred­i­bil­i­ty in his con­tri­bu­tion.?

Even his hard­core sup­port­ers on Face­book were ask­ing if he got this over-priced quote for Kam­la's build­ing from Calder Hart him­self.

This is mad­ness!One can on­ly won­der if Mr Man­ning has fall­en prey to what a col­league has re­ferred to as a type of mass hys­te­ria. Like the para­noid claims of de­mon pos­ses­sion in one of our high schools, where a stu­dent fell ill and oth­ers be­gan to man­i­fest sim­i­lar symp­toms.

From pub­lic ser­vants to at­ten­tion-grab­bing trade union lead­ers and the like who have a "do it our way" or take the coun­try down in flames at­ti­tude, the hys­te­ria con­tin­ues to spread.It's been just six months and four days since the elec­tion and now the PSA is beat­ing our Tues­days black and blue with un­com­pro­mis­ing de­mands.

Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives are call­ing for the head of Mr Dook­er­an, con­vinc­ing them­selves that they in­vest­ed mon­ey with the Gov­ern­ment and not Cli­co, and tax pay­ers' dol­lars should al­so jump in­to the hole cre­at­ed by Duprey's greed.There is even a brew­ing re­li­gious war of words be­tween Mus­lims and Hin­dus over the re­moval of a talk show host and a sense that the Part­ner­ship is mov­ing slow­ly, all fu­elled by the few that care lit­tle for the needs of many.

This fire-burn­ing mob of voic­es is noth­ing more than a push on the new gov­ern­ment to see if they will buck­le to de­mands, af­ter years of deal­ing with an "ig­nore and con­quer style" of pol­i­tics hand­ed down by the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion.The hys­te­ria is al­so fu­elled by the same old PNM style of pol­i­tics, which re­sem­bles that of the US Re­pub­li­can par­ty.

If you shout loud enough and say it of­ten enough in a unit­ed voice, fic­tion quick­ly be­comes fact.Claims of mas­sive job cuts, the dis­man­tling of Cepep, C-Dap, Gate and now al­le­ga­tions that the wire tap­ping scan­dal is ac­tu­al­ly part of a plan to re­pay drug lords who fi­nanced the Gov­ern­ment's elec­tion cam­paign have been heard from Op­po­si­tion MPs and their ad­vo­cates.?

These un­war­rant­ed at­tacks cre­ate noth­ing more than a sense of pan­ic in cit­i­zens who are pre­dis­posed to mis­in­for­ma­tion.It would serve us bet­ter as cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go–PNM and Part­ner­ship alike–not to fall for the scare tac­tics of over zeal­ous preach­ers of gloom and doom.Sep­a­rat­ing fact from fic­tion is all that is re­quired when faced with an agen­da of lies.?