Pao­lo Ker­na­han

?I was do­ing a mod­est bit of gro­cery shop­ping re­cent­ly. With two tins of tu­na in hand (oil, not wa­ter; be­cause that's how I roll), I stood in line.

In front of me there were a cou­ple pn­mites get­ting their stocks to­geth­er for the spe­cial con­ven­tion. Wear­ing their noisy yel­low par­ty T-shirts, they processed their goods in an­i­mat­ed fash­ion. I mum­bled to my­self in my best James Earl Jones voice, "It has be­gun..." They heard me and asked "wah?" As I ig­nored their mis­di­rect­ed query, I re­alised some­thing that has prob­a­bly al­ways been true: my mum­bling is ac­tu­al­ly a clear­ly au­di­ble ut­ter­ance. This could be dan­ger­ous. The tele­vi­sion cov­er­age re­flect­ed a par­tic­u­lar­ly lack­lus­ter at­tempt at stir­ring the mass­es on the part of the rul­ing par­ty. I have seen a more en­thu­si­as­tic crowd in at­ten­dance at Mas­tana Ba­har. Al­though, in fair­ness to the Prime Min­is­ter, this was prob­a­bly an­oth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of the sin­is­ter al­liance be­tween the drug traf­fick­ers and their co­horts, the in­sid­i­ous press corps bent on ma­nip­u­lat­ing record­ed video to make a seda­tive of a stim­u­lant. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is of­ten cred­it­ed with po­lit­i­cal savvy, some­thing which I have nev­er un­der­stood. Re­cent­ly of course he has re­peat­ed­ly dis­played the diplo­mat­ic grace of In­spec­tor Clouse­au. Not even this, though, I would as­cribe to the hap­less leader. Call an ear­ly elec­tion? Amid a firestorm of con­dem­na­tion, the PSA beat­ing war drums, Ude­cott, a body that just won't stay buried, pub­lic out­rage over the prop­er­ty tax? Gimme a break.

I think even for Mr Man­ning, the mem­o­ry of the dev­as­tat­ing re­sult of his last elec­tion grand­charge is fresh on his mind. Putting the coun­try on an elec­tion foot­ing could be con­nect­ed to so many things but you can rest as­sured that none of them in­clude ac­tu­al elec­tions. The po­lit­i­cal leader is throw­ing down the gaunt­let to an op­po­si­tion em­bold­ened by an up­surge (po­ten­tial­ly short­lived) in pub­lic sup­port for Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the ap­par­ent re­con­sti­tu­tion of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. The COP on its own presents no sig­nif­i­cant threat to the rul­ing par­ty, but a co­a­lesc­ing of op­po­si­tion forces brought to­geth­er by grow­ing pub­lic dis­gust with the cav­al­cade of scan­dals be­dev­il­ing the Gov­ern­ment... well that is an­oth­er foe en­tire­ly. This sabre-rat­tling is both time­ly and pre­dictable for a gov­ern­ment short on op­tions and long on de­clin­ing po­lit­i­cal stocks. Mr Man­ning may very well be flanked by the un­ques­tioned loy­al­ty of lieu­tenants such as Karen and Mar­i­ano, but Mr Man­ning's cadre of cold, char­ac­ter­less tech­nocrats will be hard pressed to mar­shal the ground forces. The Prime Min­is­ter has, of course, his own per­son­al­i­ty prob­lems to con­tend with.

In clang­ing the bell of screen­ing and nom­i­na­tion, the em­bat­tled leader on the one hand has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind the vot­ers that they have to work for their sup­per (Cepep largesse and such) and on the oth­er it presents a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­gin the del­i­cate work of ex­cis­ing the can­cer­ous Dr Kei­th Row­ley from par­lia­men­tary pol­i­tics. This has per­haps not been lost on Dr Row­ley who made it clear that he will not go qui­et­ly. Ken Val­ley did not go qui­et­ly ei­ther, but he did go. This gives the Prime Min­is­ter an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-es­tab­lish his po­si­tion as the last word in the par­ty and while it rep­re­sents a dan­ger­ous gam­ble, run­ning afoul of Dr Row­ley's sup­port­ers, noth­ing heals po­lit­i­cal wounds like time and mon­ey. It seems fair­ly ob­vi­ous that the Gov­ern­ment is now in­tent on avail­ing it­self of both. It is no sur­prise that Mr Man­ning has an­nounced a plan to dra­mat­i­cal­ly up­grade the health­care in­fra­struc­ture in this coun­try. He has been work­ing with what you gave him you see. "Be­fore they spend that mon­ey on health­care, they buy­ing flag!" Sounds fa­mil­iar? The Gov­ern­ment is sim­ply play­ing a card that the op­po­si­tion will nev­er have–the vast re­sources of the State to as­suage the dev­as­tat­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and the Calder Hart ef­fect.

This Pavlov­ian promis­ing of more than 600 hos­pi­tal beds is pred­i­cat­ed on the rul­ing par­ty's per­cep­tion of the cit­i­zen­ry as large­ly un­e­d­u­cat­ed and stu­pid. If beds were enough to cure the sick, the Hy­att would be booked to the rafters every day of the week. Look at it more close­ly. Just last week the Fi­nance Min­is­ter held a news con­fer­ence to re­mind the pub­lic, just in case it for­got, that the prop­er­ty tax regime is now up­on us and you are just go­ing to have to get used to it. Lo and be­hold we are now hear­ing about a "re­view of the prop­er­ty tax." Fol­low­ing fast on the heels of this neck-break­ing about face was the de­fer­ral of the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty de­bate. It seems that it has come to the at­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment that there sim­ply has not been enough con­sul­ta­tion with the unions on this mat­ter.

The think­ing is that "we will put it off, get these mup­pets' votes and when we get back in pow­er, rest it on dem!" Unions in this coun­try tend to vote for is­sues that di­rect­ly af­fect their mem­bers as op­posed to, say, the wel­fare of the en­tire na­tion. Put all of these things in the con­text of the Prime Min­is­ter hav­ing been sum­moned to a meet­ing at the pri­vate home of a busi­ness­man. No one seems to have a prob­lem with the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try in a sit down with some of the coun­try's most pow­er­ful busi­ness in­ter­ests. Just in case you were won­der­ing who is re­al­ly run­ning this coun­try, you need not look any fur­ther.

The idea of course is to trade heav­i­ly on our nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to­ward am­ne­sia. If the pop­u­la­tion has suf­fi­cient cud to chew, then Calder Hart need nev­er re­turn for his name would ex­ist as noth­ing more than a fleet­ing mem­o­ry of some­thing bad that hap­pened a long time ago. The tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment is al­so cu­ri­ous giv­en that quite re­cent­ly when the Prime Min­is­ter was asked about our al­lo­ca­tion of re­lief funds for Haiti, he con­ve­nient­ly evoked the eco­nom­ic down­turn which was de­nied vig­or­ous­ly by his Gov­ern- ment in the first place. Now it seems that mon­ey, once again, is no prob­lem. Elec­tion? Not like­ly. Mr Man­ning is go­ing to need every minute of the next two years to ex­or­cise the demons tor­ment­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion. In the mean­while the Op­po­si­tion, worked in­to a froth by the shal­low threat, will be­gin with the pow­er strug­gles in earnest along the al­ready ac­tive fault line with­in the par­ty. Per­haps the prox­im­i­ty of pow­er can have the ef­fect of forc­ing the ra­bid­ly am­bi­tious in­to pre­ma­ture emas­cu­la­tion of their own col­leagues as the prize gets every clos­er, yet re­mains so far away. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar could find her­self with the hounds turn­ing on her at feed­ing, af­ter the ar­dour which blos­somed dur­ing the unc elec­tions fades along with our fu­tures. Ques­tion is who out there is takin' that bas­ket?