Ken Ali

It was bad enough that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning com­man­deered the en­tire elec­tron­ic me­dia at prime time Sun­day. It was worse that Man­ning did not en­light­en us on the rag­ing is­sues of the day.

�2 Why did he sum­mon a gen­er­al elec­tion at mid-term?

�2 What is the state of the Trea­sury?

�2 What's the lat­est with re­spect to the foren­sic study in­to trou­bled Cli­co?

�2 When would the 91 Uff rec­om­men­da­tions be im­ple­ment­ed?

�2 What is be­ing done to en­sure, as Uff urged, that "mon­ey as­signed for pub­lic con­struc­tion projects must not be al­lowed to be cor­rupt­ly di­vert­ed and, there­by, stolen from the pub­lic?"

�2 Does he have con­fi­dence that the po­lice probe in­to Calder Hart would bear fruit?

�2 Does he re­gret his many pub­lic en­dorse­ments of Hart?

�2 Is the Tarou­ba Sta­di­um ever go­ing to be ready and what's the fi­nal tab?

�2 What's the truth of An­dre Mon­teil's role in the Gov­ern­ment and rul­ing par­ty?

�2 Would he con­sid­er Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his Cab­i­net?

There are sev­er­al more open-end­ed ques­tions, of course, but you get the drift of the type of is­sues Man­ning should have re­spond­ed to in his one-hour tele­cast. To be sure, some of the mat­ters were aired but the Prime Min­is­ter art­ful­ly dodged them and utilised prime time for skil­ful par­ti­san pol­i­tick­ing on the eve of a crit­i­cal gen­er­al elec­tion. And that's where the core is­sue re­sides. How fair and eth­i­cal is it for the Prime Min­is­ter to req­ui­si­tion the most viewed and lis­tened-to hour two Sun­days be­fore an elec­tion that, ac­cord­ing to all pun­dits, would be a ding-dong bat­tle? Sure­ly, there would be no con­tentious is­sue if Man­ning opt­ed to di­a­logue with the coun­try in the midst of a na­tion­al emer­gency.

But his Sun­day evening in­ter­view was sure­ly aimed at bol­ster­ing his po­lit­i­cal stocks and grant­i­ng him an un­de­served ad­van­tage. He fla­grant­ly ut­tered high-oc­tane po­lit­i­cal state­ments. If Man­ning's ar­gu­ment is that he want­ed to up­date the na­tion in a dis­pas­sion­ate man­ner, shouldn't he have en­gaged chal­lenger Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in spir­it­ed de­bate? Every­one lost out in the PM's self-serv­ing ses­sion: The is­sues were skirt­ed or side­stepped and Man­ning now has to de­fend al­le­ga­tions of huff­ing prime me­dia time.