Pe­ter Bal­roop

The rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for­mal­ly swung in­to elec­tion cam­paign mode yes­ter­day un­der the be­nign gaze of the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. He sum­moned the key PNM troops who would be lead­ing the par­ty in­to elec­toral bat­tle to what was termed a "po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy" meet­ing by par­tic­i­pants at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's. It was at­tend­ed by most of the 26 MPs and sen­a­tors, as well as the ex­ec­u­tives from all 41 con­stituen­cies. The con­fer­ence room was over­flow­ing with par­ty faith­ful. The me­dia was banned from cov­er­ing the event, but PNM chair­man, Sen­a­tor Con­rad Enill, left the meet­ing to grant the Sun­day Guardian an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on the pur­pose of the con­fer­ence. Enill con­firmed that the PNM was or­gan­is­ing to send its foot sol­diers back in­to the com­mu­ni­ties to con­duct what was in­deed an elec­tion cam­paign, one he vowed would "leave no stone un­turned" as it re­lat­ed to par­ty prepa­ra­tions.

How­ev­er, while Enill said lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions would be held as planned next year, he care­ful­ly si­dled around the ques­tion of whether Man­ning was go­ing to call a snap gen­er­al elec­tion ear­ly next year. Enill did not rule that out, but stressed it was Man­ning's de­ci­sion alone to make. But the Cas­ca­dia meet­ing was to launch a street-to-street and house-to-house cam­paign in all 41 con­stituen­cies, with spe­cial at­ten­tion be­ing paid to the 15 held by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), said Enill. "Ba­si­cal­ly, we are go­ing back in­to the com­mu­ni­ties; we are mak­ing sure that the en­tire par­ty un­der­stands we would have made promis­es at elec­tion time. "We have had two years in of­fice and we are go­ing back to find out..." said Enill. Was it the first time the par­ty was go­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ties since the No­vem­ber 5, 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion?

"It is the first time we are do­ing so from the cen­tre, the first time we are do­ing it in a co­or­di­nat­ed way, with the cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive di­rect­ing op­er­a­tions. "Nor­mal­ly what hap­pens is every week par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are ex­pect­ed to meet with their con­stituents. But this one is very spe­cif­ic. We want to be cer­tain that the com­mu­ni­ties un­der­stand what we are do­ing and if not, ex­plain it to them," Enill de­clared. He added: "We are go­ing to find our what are their con­cerns and whether they are be­ing ad­dressed." He was asked point-blank whether, de­spite the protes­ta­tions to the con­trary by Man­ning dur­ing a tour last week of his San Fer­nan­do East con­sti­tu­ten­cy, the per­cep­tion was cor­rect that the PNM was for­mal­ly launch­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. "Let me put it dif­fer­ent­ly... We have in fact post­poned lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions a num­ber of times and our com­mit­ment is to have it next year," said Enill.

Pressed on what were the chances of a gen­er­al elec­tion tak­ing place in T&T be­fore it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due, Enill re­spond­ed: "Let me put it this way. Un­der the West­min­ster sys­tem a gen­er­al elec­tion must be held at the lat­est by 2012. But the sys­tem al­lows that the po­lit­i­cal leader can call elec­tions at any time. So re­al­ly, it is his is­sue to call elec­tions when­ev­er he choos­es. "But the par­ty is do­ing what it should do, prepar­ing it­self and mak­ing sure that we leave no stone un­turned as it re­lates to par­ty prepa­ra­tions." Enill said the par­ty had not yet set a goal of how many seats it want­ed to win in the next gen­er­al elec­tion, but spe­cial at­ten­tion was be­ing paid to each of the 15 Op­po­si­tion-held con­stituen­cies.

Man­ning was the first to ad­dress the gath­er­ing and, ac­cord­ing to Enill, he spoke at length about the par­ty's or­gan­i­sa­tions and the need for them to func­tion ef­fi­cient­ly at this time. The rest of the meet­ing, which start­ed at 10 am and fin­ished around 2 pm, was chaired by deputy po­lit­i­cal leader re­spon­si­ble for par­ty mat­ters, Am­bas­sador Joan Yuille-Williams, who spoke on the nit­ty grit­ty of com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign­ing, in par­tic­u­lar stag­ing cot­tage meet­ings. For ex­am­ple, Yuille-Williams ad­vised that in­stead of us­ing pub­lic ad­dress sys­tems mount­ed on ve­hi­cles to in­vit­ed con­stituents to cot­tage meet­ings it would be more po­lite to send them in­vi­ta­tions signed by their MP, or the con­stituen­cy chair­man.