Gail Alexan­der

The pe­ri­od dur­ing which PNM MP Fitzger­ald Jef­frey oc­cu­pied for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's seat in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, was on­ly a few min­utes as Jef­frey briefly chat­ted with PNM col­league Paula Gopee-Scoon at 2.51 pm. Oth­er than that, the seat of the re­cu­per­at­ing Man­ning re­mained emp­ty amidst the of­fer­ing of get-well wish­es from his par­lia­men­tary col­leagues. Man­ning's ill­ness how­ev­er oc­cu­pied on­ly a por­tion of yes­ter­day's Op­po­si­tion pri­vate mem- bers' day in the House, which saw PNM MP Don­na Cox launch­ing a strike at Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing se­cu­ri­ty units. (And find­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­ject a note about "croc­o­dile tears" in con­nec­tion with Gov­ern­ment's stance on crime.)

It was left to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy to try and re­fute Cox's mo­tion about Gov­ern­ment's fail­ure. Sandy deemed her three ar­gu­ments, "False!...False...False!" He in­sist­ed, "There is a re­duc­tion in crime...." "....False!" re­tort­ed PNM MPs. There were no jokes yes­ter­day from PP MP Anil Roberts about the "12th man"-a ti­tle he of­ten nee­dled Man­ning with. Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, who last month chal­lenged Man­ning to speak in Par­lia­ment rather than out­side and had sparred with Man­ning on oc­ca­sion, told TG yes­ter­day: "It would be a trag­ic loss to the Par­lia­ment and T&T if Mr Man­ning were not able to re­turn to make his con­tri­bu­tions be­cause he is very knowl­edge­able and he is a mas­ter de­bater."

It may be cold com­fort to Man­ning that his ill­ness-and for­mer MSJ leader Er­rol McLeod's res­ig­na­tion from that post-suc­ceed­ed in up­stag­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam-la Per­sad- Bisses­sar's sec­ond-year an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions at Rien­zi Com­plex on Tues­day. Man­ning's stroke launched the Chi­nese Year of the Drag­on on Mon­day with dra­ma, which might be ex­pect­ed any­way for this year, judg­ing from the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal land­scape. But is­sues ap­peared to have been in the off­ing, well ahead of Man­ning's stroke. Part­ner­ship mem­ber, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, in­tro­duced its own el­e­ment of sur­prise on Sun­day with McLeod's res­ig­na­tion, launch­ing moves to build in earnest un­der new leader David Ab­du­lah as the Drag­on Year be­gan. Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day, launch­ing the Drag­on Year, said it was a good one to ini­ti­ate new projects or busi­ness. She might not, how­ev­er, have had MSJ's move in mind.

Or the UNC's March 24 ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion cam­paign which she launched with her fiery an­niver­sary speech on Tues­day, warn­ing mem­bers to be care­ful and choose wise­ly in vot­ing. With the back­ing of a ma­jor­i­ty per­cent­age of the em­bit­tered labour sec­tor, the MSJ mi­nus "Mac" seems set to shape up as a for­mi­da­ble part­ner, seek­ing to bring the UNC-dom­i­nat­ed Gov­ern­ment to book on work­ing-class is­sues Not on­ly did MSJ's cu­ri­ous­ly-timed move take the shine off the UNC an­niver­sary bash, but Ab­du­lah's ab­sence from the cel­e­bra­tion al­so caused ques­tions. His ab­sence was due to heavy traf­fic, TG was told. McLeod, al­so ab­sent, was ill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in her speech. The va­cant front row seat for Ab­du­lah through­out pro­ceed­ings was a glar­ing de­trac­tion-and dis­trac­tion-from the boast­ful speechi­fy­ing on the Part­ner­ship's co­he­sive­ness which oc­curred. De­spite Ab­du­lah's ear­li­er as­sur­ances, his emp­ty seat has led to spec­u­la­tion on whether it is a por­tent of things to come with MSJ, Part­ner­ship-wise.

In­deed, trade unions be­gan walk­a­bouts (in San­gre Grande) the same day as UNC's an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. McLeod seemed well re­cu­per­at­ed the next day to host a me­dia brief­ing where he made it clear there's no guar­an­tee MSJ will not break with the Part­ner­ship. "...But I'll do my best to keep it to­geth­er," McLeod sub­se­quent­ly told TG. McLeod in 1998 made it clear he had am­bi­tions to be­come Prime Min­is­ter, adding that he didn't want to be an or­di­nary politi­cian and if he had to have the pow­er of the Prime Min­is­ter to solve T&T's prob­lems, he was "about that too." How­ev­er as the sec­ond Part­ner­ship leader to step down since the term start­ed, he's fol­lowed for­mer COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an's move to let a col­league car­ry on.

(Ab­du­lah, a non-Cab­i­net mem­ber, has more lee­way to hold Gov­ern­ment to ac­count than COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, who toes the col­lec­tive Cab­i­net line.) Dook­er­an was un­der pres­sure from COP mem­bers about the PP's UNC dom­i­na­tion, Gov­ern­ment's modus operan­di and COP-ers fail­ure to get eq­ui­ty. McLeod's move may-al­so-have been in­evitable to avoid con­flict of in­ter­est. He'd head­ed a par­ty with labour in­ter­ests when such is­sues have been the cen­tre of Gov­ern­ment's at­ten­tion. McLeod's min­is­te­r­i­al tenure were be­ing af­fect­ed ear­ly in the term when he was giv­en "as­sis­tance" from Rudy In­dars­ingh af­ter UNC mem­bers com­plained about URP jobs. He lost URP com­plete­ly to the PM and three front­line min­is­ters in last year's Cab­i­net reshuf­fle. McLeod's com­ments on the MSJ move fol­lowed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pro­nounce­ment on Tues­day that the UNC is "in­vin­ci­ble," an opin­ion that is clear­ly skew­ered, de­spite UNC dom­i­na­tion of the Part­ner­ship.

Ev­i­denc­ing the flawed opin­ion was the fact that she called a meet­ing of the part­ners on Mon­day-im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter MSJ's move-to sched­ule a meet­ing of lead­ers next week on in­ter­nal is­sues. On Tues­day, the PM al­so elicit­ed a dou­ble take on whether she was em­ploy­ing dou­ble en­ten­dres when she called for Part­ner­ship found­ing fa­thers to stand. Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed those lead­ers present, adding "...and those of MSJ who are with us..." Yes­ter­day MSJ's Ab­du­lah said he hopes next week's meet­ing will be­gin to or­gan­ism how par­ties func­tion out­side Gov­ern­ment. COP vice chair­man Ver­non de Li­ma said there must be sin­cer­i­ty to meet be­fore they can even reach is­sues. TOP's Jack and NJAC's Makan­dal Daa­ga were un­avail­able.

How the meet­ing will rec­on­cile part­ners with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's boast of an "in­vin­ci­ble UNC" re­mains to be seen. In­deed, her ad­dress on Tues­day sig­nalled-from open­ing ca­lyp­so Woman is Boss to her speech and the shrill deci­bel lev­el it was de­liv­ered in-that she will brook no ar­gu­ments that she and her par­ty are in charge. Or are as un­pop­u­lar as per­ceived. In fact, the ban­ner on the stage that night de­clared "Stronger Than Ever." For her sec­ond an­niver­sary, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's speech de­liv­ery shift­ed from her ini­tial ma­ter­nal de­meanor to a marked­ly au­to­crat­ic style of tone and word in sync with the in­di­rect theme of dom­i­nance. The PM may have praised min­is­ters in­clud­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Roodal Mooni­lal, De­vant Ma­haraj and oth­ers. But one might have won­dered if some of the words she used to she diss the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in her ad­dress-"boor­ish, bul­ly­ing, ar­ro­gant, di­vi­sive"-are be­ing used to de­scribe some of her own front­lin­ers.

Kam­la launch­es UNC elec­tion with warn­ings

Open­ing Tues­day's cel­e­bra­tion with an In­di­an prayer-which would have ap­pealed to her sup­port­ers-and buoyed by the se­cu­ri­ty of reel­ing off Gov­ern­ment's achieve­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­in­forced her po­si­tion by crow­ing to sup­port­ers they had brought down "...the great Bas­deo Pan­day, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Patrick Man­ning." In­di­rect swipe at the stroke-rid­den Man­ning aside, the jab at Ma­haraj was clear­ly in re­ply to Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's call last week for Ma­haraj to pros­e­cute cer­tain cas­es. PNM's Faris Al Rawi al­so called for Ma­haraj to ad­vise Gov­ern­ment on hang­ings. Warn­er wore a glum look through­out Tues­day's cel­e­bra­tion, even while col­league Anil Roberts held Warn­er's hand up, prize­fight­er style. That night, Warn­er sub­se­quent­ly cred­it­ed his boss with keep­ing the Part­ner­ship to­geth­er, even af­ter her speech urged mem­bers to ask ques­tions and de­mand an­swers in the par­ty elec­tion and she stressed that the par­ty was big­ger than "any in­di­vid­ual."

How much of that was geared at for­mer leader Bas­deo Pan­day's slate for the elec­tion or Jack's cam­paign for chair­man re­mains to un­fold. The in­volve­ment of both past and present UNC chair­men and their re­spec­tive agen­das in the poll and Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ments all in­di­cate the elec­tion will see par­ty di­vi­sions aris­ing-an­oth­er as­pect to be fac­tored in­to the ail­ing Part­ner­ship struc­ture. Pro­ject­ed Nom­i­na­tion Day is Feb­ru­ary 24. But even if Warn­er is un­op­posed, UNC of­fi­cials said it may not mean that oth­er posts may not have new of­fi­cers around him. The cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive, al­ready dom­i­nat­ed by young pro-Per­sad-Bisses­sar sup­port, may see an in­jec­tion of sev­er­al "min­is­te­r­i­al heads," UNC of­fi­cials hint­ed.

PP sources say the at­mos­phere be­tween Warn­er and Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been cold in Cab­i­net on var­i­ous is­sues. Fur­ther sources of Cab­i­net con­tention emerged in the last two ses­sions be­tween past and present En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan and Kevin Ram­nar­ine con­cern­ing award of en­er­gy projects to a SAu­di Ara­bi­an firm which could im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on T&T. Un­re­solved, the mat­ter has been sent to Cab­i­net's fi­nance and gen­er­al pur­pos­es team on Mon­day, it was con­firmed. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said the Drag­on Year's tra­di­tion­al good for­tune could ease T&T's eco­nom­ic slump. She did not how­ev­er cite the flip side of the Chi­nese be­lief that Drag­on Years al­so hold crash-and-burns just as large as spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess­es-and it re­mains to play out on which side Gov­ern­ment will come down.