Gail Alexan­der

Ap­plause rip­pled at Wednes­day's press con­fer­ence when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced up­com­ing amend­ments to the law ex­empt­ing jour­nal­ists from pros­e­cu­tion for crim­i­nal li­bel.Front­line gov­ern­ment min­is­ters showed up for the me­dia brief­ing where the PM's ini­tia­tive was hailed by lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia bod­ies.

The move to amend the 167-year-old law was timed to co­in­cide with yes­ter­day's World Press Free­dom Day and man­i­fest Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to press free­dom, em­pha­sised by con­grat­u­la­tions from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the me­dia bod­ies present.

While the mea­sure ex­pos­es the pub­lic and Gov­ern­ment to the risk of sto­ries done reck­less­ly, ir­re­spon­si­bly, neg­li­gent­ly, ma­li­cious­ly, with­out checked facts or lack­ing the en­tire sto­ry–all of which At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said would es­cape pros­e­cu­tion–it pares down li­bel cas­es to those who abuse the fourth es­tate's pow­er by de­lib­er­ate­ly pub­lish­ing in­for­ma­tion they know to be false.

It will re­quire re­in­forced me­dia ac­count­abil­i­ty and since de­fault­ers risk pros­e­cu­tion un­der sec­tion 8 of the law which is still be­ing re­tained, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Gov­ern­ment's move are not the "free­dom-ex­pand­ed" me­dia alone, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing Per­sad- Bisses­sar's com­plaint about "rogue el­e­ments" in the me­dia.

So while no one was us­ing the word "ma­nip­u­late" on Wednes­day–though "con­grat­u­late" arose in some PP quar­ters–there weren't any ques­tions to the PM ei­ther on the week­ly news­pa­per be­ing launched on PP's May 24 third an­niver­sary by ex-min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, whose is­sues con­front PP with its largest chal­lenge since May 24, 2010.An in­ter­nal chal­lenge at that and in which his pa­per–to which the new li­bel law, ex­pect­ed with­in a month will al­so ap­ply–is on­ly a small part.

Af­ter be­ing screened for Ch­agua­nas West, Warn­er's chances of be­ing cho­sen to con­test may be prac­tial­ly nil con­sid­er­ing var­i­ous po­lice probes, a re­port­ed im­pend­ing FBI probe of soc­cer is­sues, the Con­ca­caf Sim­mons re­port–af­ter which Warn­er re­signed–and this week's res­ig­na­tion by Fi­fa's Joao Have­lange which de­railed the de­fence Warn­er mount­ed last week.

In the event he isn't cho­sen, UNC's can­di­date will have to best Warn­er's per­ceived pop­u­lar­i­ty and per­for­mance abil­i­ty and counter the sal­vo ex­pect­ed from Warn­er who seems set to con­test in­de­pen­dent­ly if re­ject­ed.Con­sid­er­ing his pre­vi­ous record when on po­lit­i­cal "outs" with some, the fall-out can be imag­ined. He telegraphed, in a re­cent re­port of ac­cess­ing help from cer­tain UNC of­fi­cials, he still has re­course with­in the PP.

Warn­er and UNC of­fi­cials have avoid­ed crit­i­cis­ing each oth­er as the is­sue comes to the fore. Warn­er may hold fire un­til he as­cer­tains ex­act­ly what the hi­er­ar­chy will do. And vice ver­sa with the par­ty, though it has less ma­noeu­vrering room for at­tack­ing its own mem­ber. Warn­er, shorn of min­istry, par­ty post and con­stituen­cy, will have no such re­stric­tions if he's re­ject­ed.

Bereft of in­ter­na­tion­al pow­er (via Fi­fa) and lo­cal­ly (via PP) the con­stituen­cy and his week­ly pa­per are key to em­pow­er­ing him again though pow­er and its dan­gers are ap­par­ent­ly what land­ed Warn­er in a pick­le.The chal­lenge Warn­er rep­re­sents to Gov­ern­ment–iron­i­cal­ly from with­in, as the man per­ceived to have "put" PP in of­fice–holds im­pli­ca­tions for the PM's lead­er­ship and the out­come will de­fine PP's chances in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and the 2015 polls.

If Warn­er con­tests in­de­pen­dent­ly, it re­mains to un­fold if all that flows from this, es­pe­cial­ly if he wins, could trans­form him in­to the PP equiv­a­lent of PNM's Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing his own 2008 "war" with for­mer leader Patrick Man­ning.

Last week Row­ley's mo­tion against Warn­er would have re­quired lit­tle ef­fort to for­mu­late since PP's is­sues fu­elled it. Row­ley called for Gov­ern­ment to "start the cathar­sis of ac­knowl­edg­ing some­thing has gone rad­i­cal­ly wrong and we could be­gin to step back from the brink we're on, be­ing known as a peo­ple with­out moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues"–the lat­ter words in­voked by for­mer pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son, re­turn­ing the UNC to Op­po­si­tion in 2002.

It re­mains to be seen if PNM's quest for Gov­ern­ment will ben­e­fit from PP's lat­est de­vel­op­ment and if Warn­er's woes will even­tu­al­ly cause the PP to be hoist­ed on its own 2010 an­ti-cor­rup­tion petard.