Gail Alexan­der

As par­lia­men­tary com­ic re­lief goes, PP MP Anil Roberts is your man. Roberts ran true to form yes­ter­day, treat­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to a 19-page re­ply to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion, us­ing every ges­ture, fa­cial ex­pres­sion, nu­ance and quip in stock to il­lus­trate his 35-minute de­liv­ery. It didn't work. At 2.01 pm House Speak­er Wade Mark rose.

"How long again?" Mark asked not quite plain­tive­ly. "Fif­teen min­utes..." Roberts prof­fered. Op­po­si­tion chief whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald how­ev­er said PNM would ap­pre­ci­ate the rest of the an­swer in writ­ten form, thank you. "No, no, no! Read it! Read it..!" PP MPs in­struct­ed Roberts.

Roberts agreed he'd worked "very hard" on the an­swer and in­tend­ed to de­liv­er it all. "Now where was I..?" It elicit­ed even a slight smile from Roberts' COP leader, Prakash Ra­mad­har, with whom he's crossed swords. Yes­ter­day Ra­mad­har sat pe­rus­ing a doc­u­ment as he mon­i­tored Roberts.

While COP and Ra­mad­har's stocks and cred­i­bil­i­ty nose­dived ex­ter­nal­ly con­cern­ing re­cent Part­ner­ship is­sues, in­ter­nal­ly Ra­mad­har was re­cent­ly el­e­vat­ed to chair Gov­ern­ment's con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form team, a spokesman con­firmed. Whether the con­ces­sion will make the coali­tion's fu­ture any de­gree brighter, it might not nec­es­sar­i­ly have been the rea­son Prime Min- is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­tered yes­ter­day's House wear­ing large shades.

With un­con­clud­ed Part­ner­ship de­lib­er­a­tions and the loom­ing May 24 dead­line which the MSJ had man­dat­ed for res­o­lu­tion of is­sues, it re­mains to be seen whether Per­sad- Bisses­sar's ad­dress at to­day's in­stal­la­tion of the new UNC ex­ec­u­tive- in­clud­ing con­tro­ver­sial deputy Mar­lene Coudray-will re­veal any­thing that could smoothen the bumpy Part­ner­ship path.

How are lead­ers de­scrib­ing the PP's state on its up­com­ing sec­ond an­niver­sary? "Sol­id," said UNC deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal. "Good"-TOP's Ash­worth Jack. "Weird"-COP vice chair­man Ver­non de Li­ma. "The Chief Ser­vant is not in of­fice cur­rent­ly," an NJAC sec­re­tari­at of­fi­cial said.

MSJ's David Ab­du­lah said, "I can't ex­press it in one word. More com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis is need­ed for this coali­tion at this point be­yond a su­per­fi­cial skim. I'd have to make a broad­er state­ment to prop­er­ly ex­plain we're in dan­ger of break­ing our man­i­festo's so­cial con­tract and the Fyz­abad de­c­la­ra­tion if we don't change gov­er­nance fun­da­men­tal­ly.

"Our meet­ings have been try­ing to get recog­ni­tion of that. But I'm con­scious we're close to our May 24 dead­line and some views were ad­dressed and oth­ers not. I'm not say­ing what will hap­pen next at this point." With the ma­jor­i­ty UNC part­ner fac­ing MSJ's grous­es, an un­easy re­la­tion­ship with COP and up­com­ing de­mands of as­sist­ing TOP in THA elec­tions, UNC sources said Per­sad- Bisses­sar's ad­dress to­day may seek to right the PP's bal­ance by defin­ing the roles of UNC ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and what's ex­pect­ed of them.

Coudray's role is ex­pect­ed to ex­tend be­yond the bound­aries which were en­vi­sioned when UNC founder Bas­deo Pan­day de­vised the deputy struc­ture. Of­fi­cials how­ev­er said Per­sad-Bisses­sar will like­ly save her big an­nounce­ments for PP's an­ni-ver­sary ral­ly.

PNM leader's role for par­ty dis­cus­sion

The Op­po­si­tion was once more "lead­er­less" in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day with Kei­th Row­ley out un­til May 13 and past leader Patrick Man­ning un­til Ju­ly. An of­fi­cial of Man­ning's con­stituen­cy who was in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day said Man­ning is ex­pect­ed home mid-Ju­ly and is speak­ing well. They said he's "fine tun­ing" move­ment and should re­turn in par­tic­i­pa­to­ry form to Par­lia­ment.

At which point his col­league, Paula Gopee-Scoon, would have to find else­where to park her purse, which was oc­cu­py­ing Man­ning's chair up to yes­ter­day, as it has been for re­cent weeks. "Ab­solute­ly..." said David Man­ning yes­ter­day about his fa­ther's im­prove­ment.

Mean­while though Row­ley will have to fend off the PP's lat­est im­pres­sion of him as a flip-flop artist -re­cent­ly on the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice-PNM sen­a­tors have been com­pet­ing to grill Gov­ern­ment. Sen­a­tors Fitzger­ald Hinds, Faris Al Rawi and Ter­rence Deyals­ingh gave their lat­est ex­am­ple of tag team fi­ness­ing at Tues­day's Sen­ate, leap­ing to their feet in quick suc­ces­sion as they shot rapid-fire ques­tions at min­is­ters.

Some­times the trio's en­thu­si­asm has land­ed them in hot wa­ter, at the wrong end of the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer's cau­tion­ary (in­dex) fin­ger or Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee cor­ri­dors. Hinds on Tues­day was a study in sur­prised, then dis­be­liev­ing dis­gust af­ter PP's Lin­coln Dou­glas stone-walled him with a dead­pan, "No."

Like the Gov­ern­ment's cur­rent self-scruti­ny, the Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ues re­view­ing sys­tems and con­sol­i­dat­ing sup­port. Apart from its May 27 Fam­i­ly Day, PNM has sum­moned east-west con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives on May 20 to dis­cuss its con­sti­tu­tion team re­port on mem­ber­ship views, the Op­po­si­tion con­firmed. The team ex­am­ined is­sues rang­ing from the leader's role to the length of of­fi­cers' ser­vice, Row­ley's pro­posed one man-one vote sys­tem and use of so­cial net­works to boost PNM.