Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning last night chal­lenged the Trinidad Guardian's ed­i­to­r­i­al about the suc­cess of coali­tion gov­ern­ments through­out the world. Man­ning dis­missed sug­ges­tions Trinidad and To­ba­go could en­joy the suc­cess of coali­tion gov­ern­ments, such as in Sin­ga­pore, Is­rael and Switzer­land, since the lat­ter three coun­tries were de­vel­oped coun­tries and Trinidad and To­ba­go was not.

He added that the lone de­vel­op­ing coun­try de­pict­ed in the ed­i­to­r­i­al, Malaysia, did not have a free press al­though it had a coali­tion gov­ern­ment. He said: "I held a news­pa­per ed­i­to­r­i­al in which they said there were a num­ber of coali­tion gov­ern­ments across the world that worked. They talked about Sin­ga­pore, Is­rael, Switzer­land.

"All the coun­tries they talked about are de­vel­oped so­ci­eties. And the one coun­try that they called that was not a de­vel­oped so­ci­ety was Malaysia." He added that the dif­fer­ence be­tween Malaysia and Trinidad and To­ba­go "was that in Trinidad and To­ba­go you have free­dom of the press, in Malaysia you don't." Man­ning said: "What we are try­ing to do in Trinidad and To­ba­go is to make this coun­try a de­vel­oped coun­try, in cir­cum­stances that are very unique, with a free press, which is some­thing that is ab­sent in Malaysia." He added: "I want to ask the me­dia a ques­tion: Is the me­dia in this coun­try sug­gest­ing, a par­tic­u­lar coun­try, which the news­pa­per trum­pet­ed as a suc­cess­ful coali­tion, and as they say, with a pop­u­la­tion sim­i­lar to Trinidad and To­ba­go... are they sug­gest­ing that what the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go should now do is em­brace the Malaysian mod­el?" Man­ning said he had "been watch­ing the news­pa­pers try­ing to de­fend the in­de­fen­si­ble"

He added: "Let us re­turn to the ques­tion of coali­tion gov­ern­ments... for a coali­tion gov­ern­ment to work, it must have a strong lead­er­ship... sin­cer­i­ty of pur­pose on all sides... the gov­ern­ment must have the peo­ple at heart... the leader must have po­lit­i­cal skill and po­lit­i­cal acu­men. "With­out those things...coali­tion gov­ern­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go will fall, the way coali­tion gov­ern­ments have fall­en all over the world." Man­ning was speak­ing at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Car­ry Road recre­ation ground, Tabaquite. He said the po­lice es­ti­mat­ed the crowd to be around 6,000 per­sons. In the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion, Ramesh Ma­haraj won the Tabaquite seat for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald and Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo were al­so fea­tured at the event.