Gail Alexan­der

Bat­ting and bowl­ing skills which PP mem­bers such as House Leader Roodal Mooni­lal dis­played last Sun­day in Cou­va against a crick­et side of judges were on par with the "bat­ting" Mooni­lal and oth­ers had to en­gage in this week. (The par­lia­men­tar­i­ans won the wind­ball match against the judges, but the ju­di­cial arm of the Ex­ec­u­tive beat up on MPs when it came to play­ing hard­ball.) And hard­ball it has been for the Gov­ern­ment in the lead-up to its one-year an­niver­sary of as­sum­ing of­fice next Tues­day. A pe­ri­od which has spot­light­ed Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion lead­ers-and none in a pos­i­tive or cel­e­bra­to­ry light.

In­deed, a year af­ter change of ad­min­is­tra­tions, the gold­en pedestal up­on which each side had been mount­ed has re­vealed feet of clay. Or as UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er ad­mit­ted last night re­gard­ing the PP: "...The mag­ic has been lost." Mon­day's Low­er House ses­sion saw a PP House ma­jor­i­ty vote tip­ping the scale to­wards sus­pen­sion and re­moval of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning from the par­lia­men­tary land­scape yet again in May-a year af­ter do­ing so in May 2010. Iron­i­cal­ly, well timed as a sym­bol­ic (pre-an­niver­sary) mile­mark , it may not have had quite the im­pact that might have been ex­pect­ed.

PP's lead­ing light un­der pres­sure

Hours af­ter Man­ning's sus­pen­sion, PP leader, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, found her­self the cen­tre of at­ten­tion for sev­er­al of the rea­sons for which the PP had been ac­cus­ing the PNM a year ago. The is­sue of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rent-free three-month stay at the home of GCL own­er Ralph Gopaul soon af­ter she as­sumed of­fice last May, has been spot­light­ed now-and not then-since GCL is a bid­der for a $40 mil­lion NP con­tract. Last Sun­day in Cou­va when asked if she was ac­quaint­ed with any of the par­ties in the con­tract is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, quite col­lect­ed­ly, said she didn't know since she didn't know who re­ceived the con­tract.

Af­ter ques­tions were raised about the Tu­na­puna stay and the NP con­tract by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds, who al­leged link­age, Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day, vis­i­bly un­der pres­sure from re­porters, read her ex­pla­na­tion from a piece of pa­per. This at the same time that her House Leader Mooni­lal was do­ing the same on her be­half in the Sen­ate. Mooni­lal was not the on­ly "big gun" who went to bat for the leader on the is­sue.

It was COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an-per­ceived as an in­tegri­ty icon-who is­sued Thurs­day's in­dict­ment against In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Er­ic St Cyr af­ter the lat­ter com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion. St Cyr's per­son­al view may now stand to af­fect any on-go­ing probe.

Con­sid­er­ing that it has not been St Cyr's on­ly in­frac­tion in terms of com­ment al­so, it mit­i­gates even more his in­volve­ment in the Op­po­si­tion's re­quest­ed probe on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­duct. The Op­po­si­tion's move on no less than the PP leader for the one-year an­niver­sary has un­earthed myr­i­ad ques­tions on all as­pects of the is­sue from award man­age­ment, var­i­ous min­is­te­r­i­al state­ments on the is­sue, as well as the pros and cons of prime min­is­te­r­i­al "guest­ing." For­mer PNM Min­is­ter Joan Yuille-Williams, who lives in San Fer­nan­do, has not re­spond­ed to claims that she racked up a $109,680 bill over 2003-2004 for a Hilton stay while act­ing as Prime Min­is­ter and overnight­ing for min­is­te­r­i­al busi­ness. The UNC then had chas­tised the PNM for "over­spend­ing."

Apart from the probe on the award, the sit­u­a­tion will al­so have to elic­it deep(er) PP in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the fine line be­tween process and per­cep­tion to re­in­force and en­sure that the for­mer is sol­id enough in the state sec­tor to with­stand the lat­ter. (Process par­tic­u­lar­ly be­ing the crux of the NP award is­sue.) Process and per­cep­tion be­ing the tightrope of of­fice which the PP-un­know­ing­ly-set for it­self due to its cam­paign pro­pa­gan­da. With this month's dead­line for fil­ing In­tegri­ty de­c­la­ra­tions-with an ex­ten­sion to May 2012-PNM MP Colm Im­bert has point­ed to sec­tion 24 of the In­tegri­ty Act which may have bear­ing on the sce­nario. Im­bert said, "Sec­tion 24 stip­u­lates that per­sons in pub­lic life must arrange their pri­vate lives in such a man­ner as to main­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence and trust in their in­tegri­ty.

"That's one of the ques­tions to be an­swered in this is­sue," Im­bert added. In light of how much the award is­sue has un­rav­elled and with com­pro­mise loom­ing on oth­er fronts, the cur­rent ten­der process may well have to be scrapped and is­sued afresh. With a re­port on the mat­ter due by Tues­day, fur­ther ex­changes-and de­vel­op­ments-on the is­sue are ex­pect­ed at Mon­day's and Tues­day's Sen­ate ses­sions, falling on PP's an­niver­sary. How this is­sue-in­volv­ing the stocks of PP's lead­ing light-will play out will be a defin­ing mark for the PP's pass/fail grade on first-year per­for­mance.

Shaky man­age­ment skills

PP's Warn­er says, "The mag­ic can't be there still. Every­body want every­thing now, now-every­body want Cepep, URP con­tract or some­thing-and they want it now. Be­fore they took PNM in­sults and nev­er asked for any­thing, but they're flex­ing mus­cles now. "Some of the things we've faced have been blown out of pro­por­tion, so the mag­ic will re­turn-look out in five years. We've done tremen­dous­ly based on lim­it­ed re­sources; we have to em­pathise with peo­ple's ex­pec­ta­tions."

Such pres­sures are far from the on­ly chal­lenge.

Amid the book of achieve­ments which Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­ers will read at Tues­day's Mid-Cen­tre ral­ly will be a par­al­lel list which has test­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tion's na­tion­al man­age­ment skills and found it want­i­ng, de­spite its elec­tion mantra of change, crime tack­ling and an­ti-cor­rup­tion. Gov­ern­ment has shak­i­ly weath­ered is­sues rang­ing from al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er, CAL board "tur­bu­lence," the fir­ing of PSC chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed, Cli­co set­tle­ment prob­lems, and heart­land un­pop­u­lar­i­ty fol­low­ing de­struc­tion of farm­ers' crops, plus in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions hos­til­i­ties and un­wa­ver­ing crime. Apart from non-com­ple­tion of state board ap­point­ments, full dis­clo­sure is al­so lack­ing on the Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine/SIA fi­as­co and the Mary King mat­ter.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's state­ment that news­pa­per-re­port­ed com­ments by King had helped tip the scales to­wards ac­tion to dis­miss her will have to be re-ex­am­ined in light of the fact that the same news­pa­per has now queried re­port­ed "gaps" in Per­sad-Bis-ses­sar's state­ments on the is­sue. De­spite en­er­getic ef­forts via var­i­ous "leaks" to paint King black, the for­mer min­is­ter-like Man­ning-may not be fad­ing from the scene eas­i­ly af­ter hint­ing at le­gal ac­tion. PP's first year has al­so brought with it ac­cu­sa­tions of al­leged cor­rup­tion, dic­ta­tor­ship, fail­ure to gov­ern from the Op­po­si­tion PNM.

As well, part­ners Makan­dal Daa­ga and Er­rol McLeod have voiced con­cerns over cor­rup­tion and PP op­er­a­tional tight­ness. With clash­es be­tween min­is­ters on is­sues-from Cli­co, health, labour to farm­ers, works-the need to re­align port­fo­lios, ex­pect­ed to be sig­nif­i­cant next month, is fur­ther tes­ti­mo­ny to Gov­ern­ment's cur­rent ad hoc skills set. Al­so ahead is a reshuf­fle of per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, PP sources said.

Part­ner prob­lems

COP chair­man Joseph Toney says there has been no arrange­ment for COP to send con­tin­gents to Tues­day's ral­ly. But Toney will be present. An Njac spokesman said the group will be rep­re­sent­ed. MSJ's David Ab­du­lah said he ex­pects MSJ to be there "in full force." But T&T Sheep and Goat Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Shi­raz Khan, a front­line MSJ/Fi­tun mem­ber, said he and oth­er farm­ers won't be. "The de­struc­tion of crops hasn't been set­tled fi­nan­cial­ly or re­gard­ing re­lo­ca­tion. None of us ap­plaud­ed Mooni­lal when he spoke at MSJ's launch," Khan added. The Part­ner­ship has at­tained a year with­out con­clud­ing talks to struc­ture mech­a­nisms for Part­ner­ship di­a­logue and has al­so seen a de­ter­mi­na­tion by po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties with­in PP to­wards strength­en­ing.

MSJ has on the eve of the an­niver­sary launched such moves with the back­ing of unions and farm­ers. TOP leader Ash­worth Jack re­cent­ly hint­ed at pro­file height­en­ing ahead. The COP is poised for weak­en­ing and di­vi­sion with the Ju­ly elec­tion for leader Dook­er­an's post. Dook­er­an has tak­en a page out of his for­mer pro­tag­o­nist Bas­deo Pan­day's book re­gard­ing cagi­ness on whether he will de­fend the post, though sources say Dook­er­an will con­test and "win." Con­tenders so far are MP Anil Roberts' and COP vice chair­man Ver­non de Li­ma while MP Prakash Ra­mad­har is "think­ing" about it.

COP's Toney ac­knowl­edges cam­paign­ing will scar the par­ty, al­ready split in ar­eas, be­tween pro and an­ti-UNC sup­port. Roberts, deny­ing he is wag­ing a "scathing" cam­paign, point­ed to his state­ments in the House on Mon­day. "I said I have not and will not at­tack Mr Dook­er­an. He's said COP's new pol­i­tics will help open the door to new young lead­ers. So peo­ple will make their choic­es," Roberts added. On claims Warn­er is back­ing him, Roberts said no oth­er par­ties will be in­volved in cam­paign­ing. "COP busi­ness is COP busi­ness," he added.

PN­Mites split on Man­ning wel­come

With a for­mer leader sus­pend­ed from Par­lia­ment and the cur­rent leader set to ap­pear be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee with­in the next three weeks, the Op­po­si­tion ap­proach­es its one-year an­niver­sary of elec­tion de­feat slight­ly less stressed (to date). That is if yes­ter­day's Pi­ar­co wel­come for Man­ning is any­thing to go by.

No­tice­ably ab­sent were par­ty leader Kei­th Row­ley and his ex­ec­u­tive. Asked why, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Forde-who didn't go to Pi­ar­co ei­ther-said: "I can't an­swer, I can't speak for no­body, it was open to any­one who want­ed to go...I had a ra­dio pro­gramme to do at 3 pm, so I couldn't." On Mon­day in the House, Row­ley set the tone for the team's col­lec­tive stance on Man­ning's priv­i­leges is­sue when he said the par­ty did not be­lieve the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee should be the "play­thing" of the courts.

While PNM MPs at­tacked the process which "con­vict­ed" Man­ning, they did not de­fend the per­son­al­i­ty as such. While Man­ning has promised a "course of ac­tion" ahead, on Tues­day, PNM un­der Row­ley will be en­gaged in its own an­niver­sary ob­ser­vances with a pub­lic meet­ing at the same Diego Mar­tin spot where Row­ley launched his elec­tion cam­paign last May. It is a small­er area than PP's Mid-Cen­tre Mall venue, but while the PP will be tick­ing off achieve­ments in Cen­tral, PNM in the north­west will be run­ning a black mark­er through them. With PP gov­er­nance, the new PNM lead­er­ship-de­spite Row­ley's fear­some rep­u­ta­tion-is still find­ing its own per­son­al feet apart from the plat­form which the PP's trip­ping-up has pre­sent­ed. Not the least of these is es­tab­lish­ing it­self as a strong Op­po­si­tion rather than a weak foil to Gov­ern­ment and not "part" of the PP's team. (As Row­ley and sev­er­al PN­Mites were at last Sun­day's crick­et match.)

In a word...

How's the first year of gov­ern-ment been for front­line PPers and how do they view the year ahead?

Works' Jack Warn­er-"Chal­leng-ing" and "fruit­ful."

Labour's Er­rol McLeod-"In­ter­est-ing" and "hec­tic."

For­eign Af­fairs' Su­ruj Ram­bachan -"En­joy­able" and "pro­gres­sive."

Jus­tice's Her­bert Vol­ney-"Chal-leng­ing" and "hope­ful."

MSJ's David Ab­du­lah- "Dy­nam­ic" and "chal­leng­ing."

To­ba­go Min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne -Top­pin-"Ful­fill­ing" and "pro­duc­tive."

Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts -"Bril­liant!" and "in­cred­i­ble!"

Min­is­ter in OPM Rodger Samuel -"Ef­fec­tive" and "pro­ject­ed."