When ANR Robin­son was Prime Min­is­ter, some­one was ap­par­ent­ly cheesed off by what he per­ceived as Rob­bie's ar­ro­gant lead­er­ship style and asked him whether he thought that he was God. Robin­son's re­ply was that he was not God, but on­ly God's mes­sen­ger. Which leads me to a para­graph in a Dr Sel­wyn Ryan col­umn, cap­tioned "Man­ning's woes." Wrote Ryan: "In terms of po­lit­i­cal style, Man­ning is said to be ar­ro­gant and much too pos­sessed of the view that he is the cho­sen ve­hi­cle by God to lead Trinidad and To­ba­go out of its po­lit­i­cal geth­se­mane and in­to the promised land. Man­ning, some crit­ics say, seems to be per­suad­ed that he is not on­ly God's mes­sen­ger (but en­joys a some­what high­er sta­tus–my words). Some al­so take um­brage at his pen­chant for speak­ing of him­self in the third per­son, as though he was the suc­ces­sor to Queen Vic­to­ria."

As to Man­ning as­sum­ing the "third per­son" ref­er­ence of British roy­al­ty to him­self, Ryan might have added that it was al­so one of Er­ic Williams' idio­syn­crasies, which sub­se­quent Prime Min­is­ters mim­ic­ked, per­haps un­con­scious­ly or un­com­pre­hend­ing­ly. In­ter­est­ing­ly, for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatch­er drew a cer­tain mea­sure of press ridicule for re­fer­ring to her­self as though she was Britain's "oth­er queen." Ryan's oth­er sug­ges­tion that Man­ning ap­pears to be har­bour­ing "a man­date from heav­en com­plex" seems plau­si­ble in light of Man­ning's inane re­spons­es to con­cerns of "great pith and mo­ment" be­ing couched in Bib­li­cal phrase­ol­o­gy. Now the "good book" says, "Wher­ev­er two or three are gath­ered to­geth­er in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." I have no prob­lem un­der­stand­ing what this means, but re­main mys­ti­fied by Man­ning's as­ser­tion that God is the own­er of a cer­tain church that was be­ing con­struct­ed on a cer­tain hill in Trinidad.

At an­oth­er lev­el, ac­cord­ing to Dr Ryan, then PM Man­ning may feel that he's un­du­ly be­ing made the tar­get of crit­i­cism from al­most every quar­ter. But he should take a deep breath and recog­nise that much of the crit­i­cism is not per­son­al but di­rect­ed at his lead­er­ship and/or man­age­ment style, which he has brought up­on him­self. Now al­though for ob­vi­ous rea­sons Mr Man­ning may be the im­me­di­ate con­cern, with his feet now be­ing put to the fire, there is the much larg­er is­sue that we've gen­er­al­ly not paid enough at­ten­tion to the lead­er­ship styles of po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in the Caribbean. Em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence sug­gests that the "Oxbridge" va­ri­ety does not nec­es­sar­i­ly have a de­cid­ed ad­van­tage over the "Be­hind-the-Bridge" one. And they've been al­lowed too wide a berth and too long a teth­er when clear­ly op­er­at­ing out of their depth.

The sig­nif­i­cance of such at­ten­tion de­rives from the fact that con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments favour elect­ed gov­ern­ment rather than rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­er­nance. I seem to re­call a re­port of a cer­tain PM in one of the is­lands up north play­ing "Mr Big Stuff" one day and be­ing re­duced to tears the next, turn­ing "bazood­ee" and won­der­ing what hit him, un­able to grasp what caused the unan­tic­i­pat­ed turn of po­lit­i­cal events. It's not un­known for politi­cians to ac­knowl­edge di­vine in­ter­ven­tion when­ev­er they are favourable re­cip­i­ents of an elec­toral con­test. As­sum­ing, but not ad­mit­ting, that God has a hand or even a fin­ger, for the mat­ter, in our po­lit­i­cal af­fairs and se­lec­tion of our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in the Caribbean, I'd be very anx­ious to know why, on the el­e­va­tion to high of­fice, they're pre­sent­ed with four items. The sug­gest­ed items are as fol­lows: a shov­el to dig their own po­lit­i­cal graves, a sword to deal with their po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies and stab their po­lit­i­cal friends in the back, a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to ex­am­ine the im­age and search for en­e­mies and, fi­nal­ly, a mir­ror to dis­cern their own worst en­e­my–which mir­ror, in­ci­den­tal­ly, they nev­er look in­to.

If I might di­gress a bit, when politi­cians are out of pow­er, we're promised in­tegri­ty (till it hurts), good gov­er­nance (like you've nev­er seen be­fore) and trans­paren­cy (in yuh rukungku­tungkung). We then pro­ceed to elect "our meek and hum­ble ser­vants" to of­fice, on­ly to find out that we've un­wit­ting­ly re­stored "the monar­chy." Soon enough, the me­dia are told to "mind their own busi­ness" and are asked the rhetor­i­cal ques­tion: "Who elect­ed you?" Of course, the an­swer to that rhetor­i­cal ques­tion should be an­oth­er rhetor­i­cal ques­tion: "Who ap­point­ed thee king over us?" In­stead of the promised "trans­paren­cy," what we ob­serve is what Bertie Gomes once termed "the ex­egis of ob­fus­ca­tion." Don't ask me what that means, ask Lloyd Best. Where­as I may hith­er­to ap­peared to have pooh-poohed the no­tion of di­vine in­ter­ven­tion in our po­lit­i­cal af­fairs, I re­main mys­ti­fied at the man­ner in which our ap­par­ent­ly con­joined po­lit­i­cal twins (Patrick Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day) sim­ply dis­ap­peared from the po­lit­i­cal equa­tion "at one fell swoop" and were vir­tu­al­ly "put to pas­ture," at least for the time be­ing. Some opine that in­flat­ed egos and de­flat­ed cir­cum­stances are odd bed fel­lows.

Truth be told, they could have been con­sid­ered as each oth­er's best po­lit­i­cal as­set and from the elec­toral per­spec­tive, as far as I could dis­cern, their re­spec­tive par­ties big­ger po­lit­i­cal li­a­bil­i­ties. A pe­ri­od of "lick­ing of the po­lit­i­cal wounds" and "de­nial" is un­der­stand­able. Re­cov­er­ing from post trau­mat­ic stress syn­drome can be al­lowed for, but the pa­thet­ic and churl­ish wild snip­ing at the per­ceived au­thor of their po­lit­i­cal mis­for­tunes tells us that they've cheer­ful­ly moved from their "com­e­dy of er­rors" to a grand "er­ror of come­dies." But re­gret­tably, no one is amused by or laugh­ing at the sick jokes. But the beat goes on, even when ships have al­ready sailed and some refuse to wave from the shore.

Michael Del­blond