Chickens are coming home to roost, or so it seems. Some would say that more hens are ’setting’ or actually leaving the farm since they have a sixth sense that they should no longer remain on their wonted perches since the latter’s starting to smell to the high heavens. As with the chickens, so with many anxiety ridden citizens who sense that their world is also not as it they imagined. The alleged scandals that have been associated with UDeCOTT seem be the cause of the pervasive national malaise that has overcome the nation.
The event that has disturbed life on the farm was Keith Rowley’s parliamentary pounding of Prime Minister Patrick Manning. Dr Rowley’s most recent attack was different in tone and content from previous exercises which suggests that he believes that Mr Manning is on the political ropes and that it is time to punch him into submission. A draw or a rescue by the bell now has to be ruled out. The battle for the leadership of the PNM is on, and the belt and crown are on the line. Low blows also seem to be allowed.
In Round 1 of this epic encounter, Rowley told Parliament, and indirectly the PNM, that ’the PNM is on trial.’ As he advised, ’we of the PNM must do the right thing; we have to save the party from being tainted by the UDeCOTT scandal.’ Rowley knows that many in the PNM tribe, in the East,West, North and South, are worried that their political leader was taking them down a road which spells loss of power and patronage, and that such a loss might last a long while. It was for this reason that the ghost of Johnny O’Halloran was roused once more to remind those who did not know or who might have forgotten that O’Halloran had caused their party to be demonised and characterised as being utterly corrupt. He also reminded them that the O’Halloran scandal had caused doors to be slammed in its face. Rowley told the party faithful and others who are looking to him for leadership, that the coming election would be the ’UDeCOTT election,’ and that Manning’s refusal to disarticulate the party from contemporary equivalents of O’Halloran’s could cost it the election. Rowley was also frank when he told the party faithful that the current slurping at the trough was much greedier than was the case when it was the UNC’s turn to eat.
Rowley dared Manning to get up in Parliament and tell the country why he had fired him, since the reasons officially given-bad behaviour-was clearly a ’contrived lie’ which no one took seriously. Manning has since replied, and we will look at what he has said in a succeeding column. But much of what he has said makes no sense to anyone. No party leader, no matter how much he fancies himself a patriarch cum schoolmaster, fires a key Cabinet Minister because he does not know how to ’behave’ unless more was at stake. Indeed, having regard to all that has happened, the country understands why the Prime Minister would want to get rid of persons in the Cabinet (it was not Rowley alone)who is articulate, forceful, and courageous enough to stand up to him on policy matters in general and more recently, on UDeCOTT and the constitution, especially as it relates to the executive presidency and the shape and composition of the Cabinet. Both Valley and Rowley were opposed to the proposed changes.
Some of the responses given to the charges levelled by Rowley by Imbert, Manning and Swaratsingh were cogent but missed the essential point. Imbert’s argument was that Hart and UDeCOTT were entitled to protect themselves against biased judgments just as Ramesh Maharaj was entitled to do when he too appealed his own conviction on the ground of bias. Imbert’s argument was that the allegations are yet to be proven in a court of law. True enough, and no one has called for Hart to be hung and quartered in the public square.
The Prime Minister too has responded vigorously, and his narrative raises a number of issues about what is appropriate to say about a former cabinet colleague in Parliament.
His basic position, however, is that he would maintain a stony silence on the matters at issue until Prof Uff has submitted his report. The Government’s policy was to ’let the Commission do its work and when [it] makes its findings, the Government will take whatever action it considers appropriate’.
On the face of it, this seems reasonable but what the Prime Minister does not seem to get is that the signals which he is sending to the country suggest that he and Hart are an item, a twin joined at the hip, and that he could disprove this by replacing the board until the public is satisfied that it could be entrusted with public funds.
Retaining the board of UDeCOTT and indeed awarding it additional mega contracts gives it a vote of confidence which the public does not believe it has earned. Doing so in the face of everything that has emerged in sworn testimony is a studied ’up yours’ to the public.
The exchange in Parliament gives us is a foretaste of what is likely to happen when Prof Uff eventually reports. It has also made clear that the fight is now on for the soul of the PNM. O’Halloran must be exorcised. Given the patronage which he has at his disposal, it is difficult to unseat a PNM leader, even one who has lost much of the credibility and the political capital he once had, but one can flail without actually failing.
Mr Imbert brags that the central issue in the Inquiry will not be UDeCOTT, but the cartelisation of the local construction industry, the nature of the Opposition, and much else. He boasted that ’the election will be about who is fit to run the country, which is the best party to run the country, who has the moral authority to run the country, and who is best equipped to serve the people of the country’.
The problem, however, is that none of the parties, including the PNM, is seen as having any abundance of these qualities. Mr Panday is also correct when he notes that corruption, on its own, does not decide elections in Trinidad: Race does.
While a majority expects the PNM to win, a clear majority of would be voters is critical of Mr Manning’s leadership.
The Government’s commissioned MORI Poll reports that over 75 per cent of the population is dissatisfied with the government’s performance.
That data was generated in April 2009, and the disenchantment may be even greater at the present time. The ANSA McAL mini poll also gives him a 57 per cent negative rating. What this means is that the PNM has dropped below its traditional 28 per cent baseline, and has to count on its ’negative base,’ i.e, those who will vote against the opposition on tribal and other grounds.
The PM took comfort in the fact that the NACTA polls give him a 39 per cent satisfaction rating, but people in the polling business question the quality of the data generated by NACTA polls. The Prime Minister should therefore not take comfort from those figures and rely more on such spiritual help as he might have. But as Mr Manning himself once wisecracked, ’God is merciful, but he is not stupid.’
To be continued: Round 2
