Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Many of you will, of course, be fa­mil­iar with world-re-nowned record­ing artiste Lu­dacris. Giv­en that there is so much chat­ter about the mu­sic be­ing played through the sound sys­tems by the cam­paign se­lec­tas, I would strong­ly rec­om­mend the lat­est of­fer­ing of Lu­dacris, How Low Can You Go. The ti­tle is most ap­pro­pri­ate for the gen­er­al tenor of dis­course on the PNM plat­form. There is the added ben­e­fit of a boun­cy beat to keep the flag-wav­ing, bell-ring­ing mass­es "hyp­mo­tised" and prepped for the mes­sage from on high: "You will have to eat the bread that de dev­il knead!" and all that guff.

This elec­tion is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the rul­ing par­ty to ad­min­is­ter that des­per­ate­ly need­ed sup­pos­i­to­ry of PNM per­spec­tive–just clench your teeth and hold the ta­ble my dear friends! My writ­ing de­mands that I sub­ject my­self to a fair bit of these night­ly po­lit­i­cal meet­ings. The cam­era­man nev­er seems able to find a sta­ble enough van­tage point, hence the un­avoid­able cock­tail shak­er im­age on tele­vi­sion. Be­tween this un­nerv­ing ef­fect and the heap­ing help­ings of ba­nal­i­ty and care­less sprin­klings of rib­ald hu­mour that would make Dave Chap­pelle blush, I am not sure which I find more nau­se­at-ing. Patrick Man­ning, I must say, is in rip­ping form. For the sea­son thus far his voice is reg­is­ter­ing at an oc­tave high­er than is or­di­nary for him. The text how­ev­er seems mined from a re­gion con­sid­er­ably low­er: "I warned Kam­la to leave Hazel Man­ning alone, Hazel Man­ning does not smoke, she does not drink, she does not wine down to the ground and she sleeps in her own bed..."

Not sat­is­fied with his pre­vi­ous at­tempts to de­monise the Op­po­si­tion Leader as a list­ing lush, a slave to her vices, he is now stray­ing in­to the realm of the fan­tas­ti­cal and the down­right crass. The in­fer­ence in his lat­est bile-sod­den di­a­tribe is too re­pul­sive to spell out here, even for me. As for the in­fa­mous "Guin­ness and pun­cheon" ref­er­ence, Mr Man­ning said he was mere­ly point­ing out the "fact" that this was the song be­ing played on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form and it was in­dica­tive of the es­teem in which the UNC holds its sup­port­ers. It is now his­to­ry that that song was nev­er played. In fact, there is an es­tab­lished pol­i­cy that no rum-flavoured songs be played on any UN­COP po­lit­i­cal plat­form.

Con­rad Enill ac­tu­al­ly gave an hon­est an­swer when ques­tioned about the pro­pri­ety of such a cav­a­lier re­mark, "In this po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, you will say things that will ap­peal to your au­di­ence." An hon­est an­swer no doubt, he tried nei­ther to jus­ti­fy nor de­ny it but then what ho­n­our is re­served for the truth when po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy struts about the stage. It was a lie glee­ful­ly re­peat­ed in a remixed ver­sion by Colm Im­bert. He re­galed the au­di­ence present, but as­sault­ed the na­tion­al au­di­ence with a war­bled ren­der­ing of Rum Till I Die. The naked racial stereo­typ­ing of this kyah kyah kyah for the bal­isi­er be­liev­ers was ex­plained away as "...I am se­ri­ous, there are no al­co­holics or drunk­ards on a PNM plat­form, but I can­not say the same for the UNC!" One must em­pathise with the in­cum­bent giv­en the pauci­ty of is­sues at its dis­pos­al to trot out for pub­lic con­sump­tion. Typ­i­cal­ly, the rul­ing par­ty would belt out its great­est hits on the plat­form, you know, hous­es, roads, jobs and the like. Trou­ble is there is so lit­tle that the Gov­ern­ment has done that does not car­ry the stench of cor­rup­tion with it.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid talked a good game about elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ties pre­vi­ous­ly damned to dark­ness. Even a project as fun­da­men­tal as this, the street light­ing pro­gramme, is over­shad­owed by al­le­ga­tions of nepo­tism in the award of the con­tracts for the erec­tion of these lights. I know from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence that in far-flung com­mu­ni­ties like Bras­so Seco and Tal­paro street lights have been put down where there is nary a house on these pock-marked coun­try roads for miles. Mon­key and par­rot cyar sleep in de night be­cause dem want­ed to put down as many poles as they could.

Un­cle Er­rol tells us every few min­utes in an ex­pen­sive tele­vi­sion gov­ern­ment ad cam­paign, which we paid for, all of the won­der­ful ben­e­fits which were de­rived from the host­ing of the sum­mits. A very bold claim made by the fun­ny man is that we have al­ready ben­e­fit­ed from di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment as a re­sult of these elite drink-ups. (And please lay off Er­rol, he just read the script and got paid. It is doubt­ful whether he even un­der­stands the con­tent and con­text.)

I asked Karen Tesheira to tell us ex­act­ly who has in­vest­ed, in what and by how much, and got no an­swer. This, of course, is the beau­ty of hav­ing the State's re­sources at your dis­pos­al to mount a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign in the ab­sence of prop­er cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion. An­oth­er slick 35-sec­ond swing­ing pen­du­lum makes a rapid ref­er­ence to "gas sub­si­dies." What gas sub­si­dies? You mean the sub­sidy that we have been ben­e­fit­ing from for decades, which by the way the Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed that it has every in­ten­tion of re­mov­ing? So the PNM must now fo­cus on the per­ceived Achilles' heel of the UNC, COP, NJAC, MSJ, OMG, LOL and FDATT–its rel­a­tive new­ness. The Prime Min­is­ter was hop­ing to catch the op­po­si­tion forces off guard and, through the hasty arrange­ments that would as a re­sult en­sue, fo­ment an ear­ly col­lapse through the in­sid­i­ous in­flu­ence of am­bi­tion for pow­er. Not a bad strat­e­gy in prin­ci­ple. Amery Browne, now ap­par­ent­ly a full mem­ber of the PNM lodge, de­liv­ered a dose of ven­om un­char­ac­ter­is­tic of his es­tab­lished char­ac­ter on the plat­form in "Man­za­lin­na."

He por­trayed Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a pi­rate with an eye patch. For the req­ui­site par­rot to com­plete the men­tal im­age, he re­placed it with a mon­key (Jack Warn­er); mon­key on her back...get it? So ea­ger was he to kiss his leader's ring and prove his loy­al­ty that in his care­less­ly con­struct­ed piece of pi­cong, he was ac­tu­al­ly den­i­grat­ing him­self as the "mon­key on the back" mo­tif was a racial dig at Jack Warn­er first de­ployed by Bas­deo Pan­day in the in­ter­nal elec­tions. Amery Browne, a black man, un­wit­ting­ly ut­ters a re­mark with racist over­tones. Now that, Mar­lene Mc Don­ald, is com­e­dy gold. For the most part the op­po­si­tion al­liance is ig­nor­ing the PNM vol­leys, fo­cus­ing on emerg­ing from the pu­pa stage in­to some­thing the vot­er could un­der­stand. It is go­ing to be tricky as hell be­cause the sym­bol is what iden­ti­fies the par­ty on the bal­lot pa­per. We are as­sured that Kam­la will do as promised and load the Ude­cott is­sue in her clip at the next op­por­tu­ni­ty. Mean­while, if you are look­ing for light en­ter­tain­ment and des­per­ate at­tempts at hu­mour, try the near­est PNM plat­form. You could watch it with the kids be­cause I doubt they could sink any low­er.