The position taken by some commentators in respect of the motion of no-confidence which was debated in Parliament on Friday last was that the PNM won convincingly. Looked at through other lenses, however, the victory was pyrrhic, meaning that the legitimacy losses, collateral and direct, were substantial enough to lead one to wonder whether the victory was cost effective.
It is true to say that the PNM marshalled its troops very expertly, and that the UNC was hopelessly outgunned and outmanoeuvred. The strategy of using the occasion for mini-budget speeches to showcase its positive achievements also allowed the PNM to put some effective counter-spin on the UNC’s bowling attack. Mr Maharaj’s focus was on UDeCOTT and sought to showing that the Prime Minister was an accessory in that he had wilfully and knowingly turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to what was taking place in respect of procurement. He pointed directly to the sleaze and suboptimal behaviour that characterised the corporate behaviour of UDECOTT, behaviour that in other jurisdictions would cause somebody to resign from office or worse.
Mr Warner concentrated his attack on Genivar and the ’Canadian Connection’ as well as on the Ministry of Sport which he argued was a trough at which little fish were feeding greedily. His was a good presentation.
The PNM’s incredible reply to Maharaj was that everything which he said was already in the public domain. In Mr Imbert’s assessment, not a single new serious allegation was made, and the motion was thus a flagrant waste of time. The fact that it was brought by the UNC, which was itself very corrupt when it held the reins of power, served to make the motion even more ridiculous.
Nothwithstanding the truth of that riposte, the UNC’s aim was to remind all and sundry that no satisfactory answers had so far been given to the allegations which had been made to allay the public’s fears that all is not well in the state of Denmark. Mr Imbert played his role as courtier with great panache and style and he would have to be given an ’A’grade for performance, if not for substance. To him, much of it was ’garbage’ and seemed like a joke.
We, however, note Mr Maharaj’s allegation that Mr Imbert had failed to report to the Intergrity Commission that he was in receipt of US$6m from a judgment in an arbitration matter. The money was said to have been deposited in a foreign bank account. What was alarming was the allegation that the Prime Minister caused the Commission to discontinue its investigation into the matter which had already begun. The Prime Minister denied that he had done any such thing, and washed his hands of the matter, saying that it was one for the Integrity Commission to deal with. The Prime Minister told us that, ’on matters of integrity, I protect no one. I cannot answer for anyone. They are on their own.’
But this was the same type of behaviour that has caused Mr. Panday to be where he is today. He watched the sheep graze without doing anything to stop them from overgrazing the common. One might say that it was a Trinidad version of the ’tragedy of the commons’. The allegation is that Mr Panday himself took part in the grazing frenzy and therefore had no leverage to expose anyone.
I do not believe that Mr Manning is wearing sheep’s clothing, but he is forcing those who put country above party to ask the same troubling questions that were asked in respect of Dr Williams. If he was not himself involved, why was he so tolerant of wrong doing? Why, many continue to ask, is Mr Manning so dismissive of public opinion on the Sunway matter? Why fire the two ministers who, inspired by concern for the public interest, dared to ring the tocsin to warn him about what seem to be happening inside the belly of the beast? Is he so certain that future investigations would absolve him of the accusation that he played Pontius Pilate while the Temples of public finance were being desecrated?
The statement has been made that the Government had an impregnable majority in Parliament and that the motion was doomed to fail. But motions of no-confidence or censure are not always intended to knock out a government. The strategy might be more Fabian, the intent being to undermine public confidence in the incumbent Government.
The Opposition’s role in the Westminister model is to make the Government look bad in the hope that by doing that, the Government would be retired by the electorate in time to come. Fortunately for the PNM, ethnicity, opposition factionalism and incompetence prevent the pendulum from swinging as it did in Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Belize and Bahamas. Clearly, however, the PNM has not lived up to the standards which led many to support it in the millennium and other elections. What was on the political chopping bloc last Friday was not merely its overall performance as a government, but its performance in the area of governance as well, the two not being the same. Our judgment is that the PNM was not only ’failing’ as a government in some critical areas, but more importantly, it was failing some of its own self-imposed tests of ’good governance,’ particularly in respect of transparency, accountability and public probity. Its deliberate misuse of the Woodford Square was a serious political blunder, and someone should have told the Prime Minister that that was an illegal and inappropriate thing to do.
The government can, with some justification, claim that a great deal of the current inflation was imported and not entirely of its own doing. It could also argue that the spiralling homicide rate and the travails of the criminal justice system are part of a global disease spawned by drug trafficking, and that the problem afflicts communities as diverse as Mexico and Vancouver. Some of the other problems which afflict the public service generally are perennials which may not be easy to fix.There is, however, little that prevents the Prime Minister from fixing the procurement system to reduce the incidence of bureaucratic opacity and corruption in which those who are involved seem immune from successful prosecution. One does not earn a legacy and be regarded as a great or near great Prime Minister by reinventing the role of Pontius Pilate.
