Max­ie Cuffie

The mind trick is some­thing used by Jedis to per­suade peo­ple to do things as they wish them to do. This is gen­er­al­ly achieved by the Je­di wav­ing his hand slow­ly in front of his face and speak­ing slow­ly and clear­ly what they would like the per­son to be­lieve.This is of­ten used in jest for when you are try­ing to per­suade some­one of some­thing and it isn't go­ing very well.

Guard: Do you have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion?

Je­di: (wav­ing hand) We do not need any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Guard: You do not need any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

–Ur­ban Dic­tio­nary

Fans of the Star Wars saga would have recog­nised in last Mon­day's Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress meet­ing in Barataria the ul­ti­mate Je­di mind trick per­formed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.Speak­ing be­fore a mod­est gath­er­ing of UNC sup­port­ers, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced on be­half of the lead­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship: "We will con­test the elec­tions as a part­ner­ship. We know that this is your de­sire and I am com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing your dream for uni­ty," she was quot­ed as telling her au­di­ence.

Con­gress of the Peo­ple chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan told News­day the fol­low­ing day that the par­ty had made no such de­ci­sion and would be meet­ing on the mat­ter to­day."Af­ter that we will com­ment," she said.

The truth is, up to then, no meet­ing had even been held by the Part­ner­ship mem­bers on the mat­ter, with the on­ly oth­er part­ner ca­pa­ble of field­ing can­di­dates, the COP, now un­der­go­ing a pro­longed pe­ri­od of navel-gaz­ing as the PP con­tin­ues to un­rav­el. Gov­ern­ment spokes­men are no longer speak­ing about win­ning the next gen­er­al elec­tion or bask­ing in the glow of the ad­min­is­tra­tion's lofty achieve­ments.

More and more, the par­ty line has be­come self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry ex­pres­sions on the fact that they have held on to of­fice so far and their de­ter­mi­na­tion to re­main in gov­ern­ment un­til 2015.It was by no means a co­in­ci­dence that the PM's an­nounce­ment that the elec­tions would be held when they are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due was made in the week fol­low­ing the re­buke suf­fered by the ad­min­is­tra­tion in the re­pu­di­a­tion, by the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (De­fence and Po­lice Com­plaints) Bill.

While there had been much spec­u­la­tion that the PM, giv­en the PP's low stand­ing in the polls, would at­tempt to post­pone the elec­tions, to do so would have re­quired the sup­port of at least one in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor.

The in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, un­der the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, had be­gun to ques­tion even the le­gal­i­ty of post­pon­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions and when the PNM un­der Patrick Man­ning had been able to se­cure the votes to post­pone the elec­tion one last time un­til Ju­ly 7, 2010, it was based on an as­sur­ance that no such bill would ever be brought to the House.

Still, it had on­ly passed with the sup­port of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Gail Mer­hair and Michael An­nisette, whose "in­de­pen­dence" had even been ques­tioned by the pres­i­dent who ap­point­ed them.

The de­ci­sion by the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to shoot down such a crit­i­cal Gov­ern­ment bill as the sol­dier-po­lice leg­is­la­tion meant that the Gov­ern­ment could no longer re­ly on hav­ing many friends on the in­de­pen­dent bench­es and any at­tempt to ex­tend the life of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies was fraught with dan­ger and would like­ly fail.

Al­though the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready be­gun to float a po­ten­tial ex­cuse in the need to in­tro­duce yet again lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, the vote by the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors sug­gest­ed they would not be co-opt­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, there­fore, now finds her­self in pre­cise­ly the same pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion which pushed Patrick Man­ning to com­mit po­lit­i­cal hara-kiri on May 24, 2010. Had the gen­er­al elec­tion not been called, Man­ning was fac­ing an all-but-cer­tain lo­cal gov­ern­ment de­feat, which would have seen fi­nanc­ing and oth­er re­sources haem­or­rhag­ing from the PNM and would have cat­a­pult­ed the PP in­to of­fice when­ev­er the next gen­er­al elec­tion was called. He took in front.

Giv­en the ig­nominy suf­fered by the PP and its To­ba­go arm, the TOP, in the Jan­u­ary 21, 2013 THA elec­tion, as well as opin­ion polls which sug­gest the PM and her ad­min­is­tra­tion's pop­u­lar­i­ty are in free fall, Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be weigh­ing the same op­tions which Man­ning did, but un­like her pre­de­ces­sor, the PM does not have lee­way to make that de­ci­sion on her own.

Both the UNC and the COP are now in dif­fi­cult po­si­tions and will be seek­ing to avoid the elec­toral fate of the TOP. The sud­den board res­ig­na­tions and de­par­tures sug­gest a qui­et ex­o­dus is tak­ing place as peo­ple be­gin to po­si­tion them­selves to shift al­le­giances. Gov­ern­ing in such a sce­nario is like build­ing on shift­ing sand.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is quite right, there­fore, when she says the PP's best chance in the elec­tion is as a uni­fied front, but even then the coali­tion is like­ly to lose and even fur­ther doom both the par­ties' chances in 2015.The COP's pre­ferred op­tion should be to be­gin slow­ly dis­tanc­ing it­self from the UNC, be­gin­ning with the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. That sce­nario, how­ev­er, can on­ly see both par­ties be­ing sav­aged in a three-way con­test. There are no good short-term op­tions.

We can ex­pect there­fore, to see more Je­di mind tricks sug­gest­ing the PP ex­pects to hold on to 11 cor­po­ra­tions and even chal­lenge the three held by the PNM.The prob­lem with Je­di mind tricks, how­ev­er, is that they on­ly work in the movies.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.