In Act One of the historical drama now showing, a hero figure representing the People's Partnership regime is contending against two dragons of the Trinidad and Tobago past, surviving into the present. From their places in the pit of the theatre, viewers can discern what, in the screenplay of destiny, the stargirl and her people may not themselves recognise: an unfolding, natural, hostile, alliance between the PNM and the Jamaat al Muslimeen.

Expect, then, unheard and unheeded, shouts of support and of warning, rising from agitated voices in the dark of the pit. In a single week, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan set up legal and forensic inquisitions into seven State entities, all near and dear to the projects and the purposes of the displaced PNM administration. Then, after an auction of 10 properties linked to Imam Yasin Abu Bakr had been reviewed as a "flop," the Attorney General notified 57 other Muslimeen that properties in their names were liable also to be auctioned off, or acquired by the State.

Righteous aggression, on those two fronts, at the same time, unnerved all who are beholden to dark superstitions. One such, based on the lamentable 1990 experience, advised against disturbing the fallen PNM beast with accusations of corruption.

It had been the NAR government's doing of this in July 1990, which produced the trigger effect, detonating the attempted coup. Troubling trouble is unpredictable: some buried bones are better left undisturbed. Such sentiments echo online and in print. "Now that the PNM dragon has been slain, the Partnership is about to engage itself in a frenzy of 'cleaning up corruption'," letter-writer Lynette Joseph noted disapprovingly last week.

Just then, too, a Guardian editorial characterised the pursuit of court-ordered compensation as the State's Shylockian effort "to extract its pound of flesh from Yasin Abu Bakr." T&T oldest newspaper, traditionally read to represent establishment, or respectable, opinion, advised that such pursuit "would seem like uncalled for and provocative prosecution."

Mr Ramlogan, then, is put on notice that his legal pincer attack on the PNM and the Jamaat al Muslimeen is capable of arousing morally conjoined jihads of retaliation. It is from the unforgotten past that this attorney general derives marching orders, even as those troubled in spirit urge him to leave well alone, and to "move on."

The People's Partnership administration has, however, committed equally to an inquiry into the 1990 attempted coup, and to exacting compensation for what the courts had held the Muslimeen jihadists responsible.

Wishful thinking survives, almost as an urban legend, to the effect that "the PNM dragon has been slain."  

Sat Maharaj wrote of the "dying carcass of the PNM," and asserted that "the PNM and Manning have been virtually wiped off the face of the political map." Wherever I walk and listen and read, however, vital signs of the beast appear. A PNM consciousness remains affectionately alive in the hearts and minds of people who know nothing else, and a PNM culture conditions their responses to a new, post-PNM, era in government.

This phenomenon expresses itself, among other ways, in a judgmental double standard according to which multiple Patrick Manning misbehaviours appear less and less egregious. The more people focus on what Kamla Persad-Bissessar may be up to in New York, it seems, the less they remember the Manning private-jet junkets—to Cuba, Latin America, all over the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Israel…

"Had it been the PNM who had done this," said Marlene McDonald about last week's New York trip reports, "the whole country would have been on our backs." And, for sure, much of it would have flowed down PNM backs like water down a duck's.

Ms McDonald herself healthily survived the abomination of, and the low-level public remonstrance against, the secret, PNM-favouring, scholarships, whose existence she had tried in vain to conceal. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar's "NY" shopping bag, or the barrel preceding her arrival, should contain some updated wisdoms about the handling of her media relations. "Press Secretary" is so old-fashioned a term that Americans probably looked with curiosity, or sympathy, at the man identified by that designation.

For Garvin Nicholas, however, it amounts to a ticket to the inner circle of power—a ticket so coveted, that he cherished it over regional jefehood in the Diego Martin corporation. With media relations, as with so much else, the People's Partnership has actually been doing so little as to provide almost no track record of activity to praise or to condemn. Little legislation passed before the "summer" Parliamentary recess.

Thus has the stage been set, in the post-summer period, for a furious explosion of decision making and policy thrusting. If only in the filling of board vacancies, a profile is due to enlarge of what the new regime disposes, whom, and how. Meanwhile, from the lower threshold of tolerance usually applied to non-PNM administrations, judgments have been recorded on image and signals and gestures.

One elaborate gesture, the New York trip, suffered for want of explanation in T&T, and certainly for want of management in the big city. Already, indeed, a third "dragon" breathing fire is that of information and communication for the People's Partnership. Ms Persad-Bissessar should  assuredly recognize this one no less lively, and no less dangerous, than the other two.