Gail Alexan­der

There was a long drawn-out cho­rus of "Noooooo (man)!" in the Sen­ate on Tues­day when Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyal-singh voiced his con­cern. Deyals­ingh had won­dered if Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to sneak a prop­er­ty tax in­crease through the back door via a pro­posed postal code sys­tem.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan (and the rest of the PP Gov­ern­ment side) had begged, laughed and snort­ed de­ri­sive­ly to dif­fer. "But I'm not con­vinced," Deyals­ingh added, claim­ing Gov­ern­ment had back­tracked on oth­er is­sues af­ter promis­ing no new tax­es.

Con­cerns about back­track­ing are like­ly to arise in quar­ters oth­er than the PNM and cer­tain­ly clos­er to home in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship fol­low­ing Thurs­day's third meet­ing of PP lead­ers. For what has be­come the fo­cal point and bone of con­tention of the meet­ings to date, the ses­sion­al by now might have ac­quired the un­of­fi­cial tag line of "The Cou-dray Con­fer­ences."

Thurs­day's an­ti-cli­mat­ic "out­come" saw the COP's call for Coudray's re­moval from the San Fer­nan­do may­or­ship be­ing put on ice mo­men­tar­i­ly as-PP sources told TG-the se­nior UNC part­ner re­fused to fol­low through on ini­tial in­di­ca­tions that the call might have been heed­ed.

Along with con­ced­ing on the COP's ar­gu­ment about the south may­or­ship be­ing a COP call, the par­ty was al­so thrown a few po­lit­i­cal bones con­cern­ing of­fers of Cab­i­net, Sen­ate and am­bas­sado­r­i­al post­ings. Out­lin­ing the se­quence of the three meet­ings, the source said at the first PP meet­ing the COP emerged an­gry since the par­ty had been sharply rep­ri­mand­ed for speak­ing about the Coudray is­sue ahead of that meet­ing.

They said every­one emerged smil­ing from the sec­ond meet­ing since the UNC agreed ef­forts would have been made to ask Coudray to re­sign. How­ev­er, on the UNC side, of­fi­cials said the par­ty's new na­tion­al­ist ex­ec­u­tive to which Coudray is at­tached "in­sist­ed Coudray stay on lest the COP emerges from the is­sue look­ing like it had best­ed the se­nior UNC part­ner, which would have in­creased its po­lit­i­cal stand­ing.

A PP source said it had been ex­pect­ed that Thurs­day's meet­ing would have an­nounced that Cou-dray would "go," on­ly to find out that no UNC ef­fort would be made to con­vince Coudray to re­sign. The COP now has to take the po­si­tion and UNC's of­fered op­tions back to its coun­cil for de­lib­er­a­tion.

But COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har may not have been the on­ly un­hap­py one on Thurs­day since COP's non-com­mit­ment on the op­tions of­fered al­so left the UNC in a pick­le at meet­ing's end when the Prime Min­is­ter left for Cab­i­net, the source said.

Yes­ter­day a COP ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber said the COP, in Part­ner­ship in­ter­est, may like­ly set­tle on some of the op­tions-Cab­i­net, Sen­ate, am­bas­sador post­ings-of­fered, to try to make po­lit­i­cal lem-on­ade out of what is clear­ly a bit­ter lemon is­sue.

But the COP is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue ob­ject­ing to the breach­ing of the Fyz­abad de­c­la­ra­tion.

The COP is now torn be­tween frus­tra­tion with the sit­u­a­tion of be­ing put down on its ini­tial call, be­ing thrown a bone (or three), and con­tin­u­ing with du­ty as the Part­ner­ship's "sav­iour"-a role the COP re­alis­es it will have to play even more than ever now fol­low­ing this lat­est po­lit­i­cal brou-ha­ha.

"Some­times the role of sav­iour al­so works against us," one se­nior COP-er con­ced­ed yes­ter­day. COP's Ra­mad­har could al­so face a cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lem as a re­sult of this round of the is­sue and con­sid­er­ing the op­tions UNC has at­tempt­ed to paci­fy the COP with.

Al­though the UNC ap­peared to have trounced the COP this week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's po­lit­i­cal stocks among her fel­low lead­ers may al­so be af­fect­ed due to the change of po­si­tions be­tween the last two meet­ings. Part­ners may be scep­ti­cal in the fu­ture and the Coudray is­sue could stand as the in­vis­i­ble "ele­phant in the room" every time Part­ners ne­go­ti­ate an is­sue.

Row­ley's 'spir­i­tu­al' ad­vis­ers

If for­mer PNM leader Patrick Man­ning was cru­ci­fied po­lit­i­cal­ly for hint­ing he in­ter­act­ed with spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er Ju­liana Pe­na, it doesn't seem to have dis­cour­aged his suc­ces­sor Kei­th Row­ley from re­veal­ing that, "Vir­tu­al­ly every week, every month I get ad­vice from some leader in the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty."

Row­ley dis­closed this while ad­dress­ing Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists at Bal­isi­er House where the PNM host­ed a func­tion mark­ing Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day. Row­ley had added, "And as a politi­cian I ac­cept the ad­vice grace­ful­ly. I'm grate­ful for your prayers. Would you ac­cept one bit of ad­vice from me, the politi­cian-get your act to­geth­er."

The func­tion marked a mile­stone of sorts. PNM of­fi­cials said Bap­tists had not been on the lo­ca­tion dur­ing the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion's days. In­deed, some of the pro­gramme's songs in­clud­ed Prodi­gal Sons and Daugh­ters Come Home and To­geth­er Again and Row­ley pitched to the Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty, prais­ing its mem­bers.

If Row­ley had not been ad­dress­ing Bap­tists that day it could have been con­strued that his mes­sage might have been meant for his own par­ty rather than the Shouter Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty. Row­ley had ad­vised Bap­tists to "get your act to­geth­er" and "find a way to im­ple­ment a man­age­ment struc­ture and a hi­er­ar­chi­cal ar-range­ment" to en­sure the group­ing did not re­main di­vid­ed.

He thread­ed the call to the di­vid­ed com­mu­ni­ty through­out his ad­dress to the gath­er­ing, which at­tract­ed more Bap­tists than it did PNM MPs and of­fi­cials. Row­ley said Bap­tists need­ed one body to hold their place at the na­tion­al lev­el and their ti­tles would still be ob­served and their "flocks" would still be be­hind them.

With such sen­ti­ments, the mes­sage might well have been to his own par­ty since there are lin­ger­ing con­cerns still in­di­cat­ing splin­ter­ing with­in the PNM. Row­ley's view that man­age­ment of their af­fairs would great­ly im­prove if Bap­tists spoke as one body could well per­tain to the PNM al­so.

In that sense, par­tic­u­lar­ly, it would be quite cor­rect since the Op­po­si­tion, un­der con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ties, bears as great a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as the Gov­ern­ment. How the UNC/COP (and PNM) move on from their re­spec­tive events this week could shape up fur­ther de­vel­op­ments.

• See to­mor­row's Sun­day Guardian for con­tin­u­a­tion of GAIL ALEXAN­DER'S po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary