Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's pop­u­lar­i­ty is def­i­nite­ly dwin­dling, even among his own sup­port base, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have agreed. Man­ning's grow­ing un­pop­u­lar­i­ty stems from a se­ries of re­cent events and his re­ac­tion to them, as well as, the "Row­ley and Kam­la fac­tors," the Sun­day Guardian was told. At least one po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist felt Man­ning was "an­oth­er Pan­day in the mak­ing." Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad not­ed, how­ev­er, that while sup­port for Man­ning is de­clin­ing, it is no in­di­ca­tion of de­clin­ing sup­port for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. She not­ed that the eth­nic fac­tor al­ways had a ma­jor in­flu­ence on vot­ing pat­terns and she be­lieves it will be no dif­fer­ent in the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

At­tempt­ing to trace the be­gin­ning of Man­ning's un­pop­u­lar­i­ty, Ram­per­sad said, "Usu­al­ly, when gov­ern­ments or regimes are ap­proach­ing their third term, they tend to be­come un­pop­u­lar." She said there are two main rea­sons. "A large part of their own sup­port base want change. "Sec­ond­ly, the gov­ern­ment be­comes so over-con­fi­dent that they start to take their own sup­port base for grant­ed. "This over con­fi­dence al­so con­tributes to ir­ra­tional ac­tions, where the leader feels he could do any­thing and get away with it. "This sense of over con­fi­dence is con­veyed to the pop­u­la­tion."

PM re­spond­ed ir­ra­tional­ly

Ram­per­sad out­lined "some very se­ri­ous is­sues" in which Man­ning re­spond­ed ir­ra­tional­ly.

1. "There's the prophet­ness is­sue. Man­ning re­spond­ed to this in Par­lia­ment by talk­ing about jour­nal­ists who worked on the sto­ry get­ting a spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence like they nev­er had be­fore."

2. Ram­per­sad said de­spite pub­lic ev­i­dence of wrong do­ing, Man­ning con­tin­ues to de­fend for­mer Ude­cott chair­man, Calder Hart.

"Afro-Trinida­di­an busi­ness may see Hart as a White man get­ting all the mon­ey."

3. The al­le­ga­tions by lo­cal artistes that there are mil­lions of dol­lars in flaws in the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa) is an­oth­er is­sue that may have caused sup­port for Man­ning to de­cline. At the open­ing of Na­pa, Man­ning boast­ed about the beau­ty of the build­ing and praised Hart.

4. The "Kam­la fac­tor" can be an­oth­er cause of dwin­dling sup­port for Man­ning, Ram­per­sad said.

"Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is get­ting a groundswell of sup­port from the UNC base which can spill over in­to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion if Man­ning's un­pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tin­ues. "And, if the Con­gress of the Peo­ple con­tin­ues to not present it­self as a vi­able al­ter­na­tive," she added.

'Woman fac­tor may work against him'

Analysing Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pop­u­lar­i­ty, she said, "Kam­la is car­ry­ing her pol­i­tics in a cer­tain di­rec­tion. "She ex­udes a dif­fer­ent kind of charis­ma to (Bas­deo) Pan­day. She comes across as some­one who cares about the is­sues. She's not in­to pet­ty pol­i­tick­ing. "Not that the eth­nic card will not play in the next gen­er­al elec­tion. I think it will," Ram­per­sad said. She said the "woman fac­tor" may al­so be work­ing against Man­ning. "The fact that she's a woman is dif­fer­ent and she may be per­ceived as more com­pas­sion­ate and hu­mane than a male leader." Ram­per­sad said she hopes that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would not "rule like a man" if she as­sumes pow­er and be­come like "The Iron La­dy," for­mer British prime min­is­ter, Mar­garet Thatch­er.

Ram­per­sad said all of these things could im­pact on the im­pend­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions lat­er this year. "I will be cau­tious to make pre­dic­tions about the gen­er­al elec­tions. Our elec­torate has a short mem­o­ry and in three years, all could be for­got­ten. "Pol­i­tics car­ry a ra­tio­nale of its own," she said. Ram­per­sad said Man­ning is not an­oth­er Pan­day in the mak­ing be­cause the cir­cum­stances that led to Pan­day's un­pop­u­lar­i­ty were dif­fer­ent. She said Pan­day's age and the fact that he lost two gen­er­al elec­tions led his sup­port­ers to think he was un­able to move them from Op­po­si­tion.

Grow­ing un­pop­u­lar­i­ty

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says Man­ning's grow­ing un­pop­u­lar­i­ty is forc­ing him to do a lot of dam­age con­trol. The PM's dam­age con­trol meth­ods, un­for­tu­nate­ly, seem to be work­ing against him, Ra­goonath said. Giv­ing a good ex­am­ple, he re­called the re­cent "war" that Man­ning de­clared with lo­cal con­trac­tors. Man­ning, soon af­ter, said he was not en­gaged in any war with any group in T&T. "Yes, his pop­u­lar­i­ty is def­i­nite­ly dwin­dling," Ra­goonath said. "Even among his own sup­port­ers to some ex­tent." He agreed with Ram­per­sad, how­ev­er, that this does not mean that peo­ple will not vote for the PNM. "Man­ning is the is­sue, not the PNM," he said.

The par­ty has time on its side

While Ra­goonath be­lieves that Man­ning and Pan­day "are cut from the same po­lit­i­cal cloth," he does not be­lieve Man­ning will nec­es­sar­i­ly suf­fer the same fate as Pan­day, who was hu­mil­i­at­ing­ly boot­ed out of the lead­er­ship post by his sup­port­ers. "Man­ning and Pan­day's po­lit­i­cal teacher was Dr Er­ic Williams, who was a max­i­mum leader. "Man­ning has to lose an elec­tion be­fore he is boot­ed out. The PNM has its own in­ter­nal dy­nam­ics in which the par­ty will sup­port the leader, par­tic­u­lar­ly when he is the PM, no mat­ter what." Ra­goonath ob­served that T&T is on­ly now mov­ing to de­mand change but "is not yet there." Can Man­ning re­deem him­self? "One thing the PNM has go­ing for them is a lot of time. "The next gen­er­al elec­tion is in 2012 and may even go to 2013," Ra­goonath not­ed.

At a walk­a­bout in San Juan last Mon­day, an 81-year old re­tiree blocked Man­ning from en­ter­ing his yard.

He al­so blocked Man­ning from greet­ing oth­er mem­bers of his fam­i­ly. He said had been a loy­al PNM sup­port­er up to the last elec­tion but was now in favour of change.

He com­plained about the Ude­cott is­sue. Rev Court­ney Joseph, an­oth­er res­i­dent, said he was em­barassed about the Ude­cott sit­u­a­tion.

Man­ning was al­so greet­ed warm­ly by many dur­ing the walk­a­bout.

For­mer Op­po­si­tion Leader, Bas­deo Pan­day, was al­so heck­led and cussed dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 24 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in­ter­nal elec­tions in Chan­danagore in his own con­stituen­cy of Cou­va North.

Pan­day, in a his­to­ry-mak­ing move, was re­placed by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the elec­tions.