Gail Alexan­der

Al­though one ac­cused the oth­er of recit­ing sug­ar in­dus­try his­to­ry dur­ing yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment de­bate, both PNM's Colm Im­bert as well as PP's Rudy In­dars­ingh did ac­tu­al­ly in­dulge is "look­ing back" at the sec­tor in their re­spec­tive con­tri­bu­tions.His­to­ry, good and bad, past and present will cer­tain­ly play a role in how Caribbean Air­lines' new board ne­go­ti­ates out of CAL's loss-locked hold­ing pat­tern.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's state­ments yes­ter­day on the change val­i­date a valu­able PP les­son on the dan­gers of po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees. Recog­ni­tion of this is demon­strat­ed by Gov­ern­ment's move to­wards a pro­fes­sion­al­ly ground­ed board, heavy on the nec­es­sary busi­ness, fi­nan­cial and le­gal tal­ent.It's the lat­est po­lit­i­cal life-les­son for the Part­ner­ship, mark­ing its third an­niver­sary next Fri­day, not just four min­is­ters fired and an MSJ Part­ner short, but al­so cur­rent­ly one seat less than the 29 PP held in 2010.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the first seat to be­come va­cant was held by Jack Warn­er, the man large­ly per­ceived as as­sist­ing PP's elec­tion vic­to­ry.In three years, PP has un­der­tak­en fix­ing (sys­tems), fur­ther­ing (oth­ers), foun­da­tion strength­en­ing (the econ­o­my, not Part­ner­ship), faux pas (on gov­er­nance), floun­der­ing (in po­lit­i­cal sink­holes) and fight­ing is­sues (the Op­po­si­tion and each oth­er). Not al­ways in that or­der, and with ill ef­fect on its change agen­da though PP's cap­tain has main­tained her ba­sic crew and at­tempt­ed to act when ills emerge.

Now seek­ing to con­tain is­sues con­cern­ing ex-jefe Warn­er, the Prime Min­is­ter and com­pa­ny at Mon­day's UNC Fo­rum again plugged par­ty uni­ty, em­pha­sis­ing the PNM was the en­e­my and nev­er men­tion­ing Warn­er or by-elec­tion.That night's ad­ver­tise­ment for PP uni­ty was sacked min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney who re­cent­ly said he wasn't at­tend­ing fo­rums and knocked Gov­ern­ment for los­ing touch with cit­i­zens. Vol­ney now ap­pears to have been heart­ened by the PM's move to go to the peo­ple, a sug­ges­tion Warn­er had made al­so.

Vol­ney's pres­ence telegraph­ing teams­man­ship de­spite his dis­missal and pre­vi­ous crit­i­cisms of some col­leagues was an ex­am­ple PP may hope Warn­er would fol­low.Vol­ney, how­ev­er, still telegraphed his in­de­pen­dence that night–and all that could flow from it–by wear­ing a neon green UNC shirt rather than par­ty yel­low. He's al­so made it clear he'll be "con­struc­tive­ly crit­i­cal" in next Mon­day's no-con­fi­dence de­bate con­cern­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.

Vol­ney is mum on his pos­si­ble at­ten­dance at Fri­day's PP an­niver­sary bash where any­thing con­cern­ing the by-elec­tion–a sen­si­tive mat­ter–is un­like­ly ap­pear on the pro­gramme, which is set to un­der­score PP achieve­ments and sta­bil­i­ty.Even if ab­sent from that event, Warn­er's pres­ence will be felt since his week­ly news­pa­per de­buts that day.

Its con­tents will de­ter­mine whether Warn­er will up­stage PP's an­niver­sary shindig and pro­vide a talk­ing point oth­er than PP speech­es. And if that could con­tin­ue through­out the term.Warn­er's elec­tion­eer­ing for Ch­agua­nas West re­cent­ly as­sumed grand­stand­ing pro­por­tions such his Sea Lots walkover "gift," promised while in Gov­ern­ment.

The ethics of the sit­u­a­tion have how­ev­er shift­ed with his move out of Gov­ern­ment, spark­ing de­bate whether Gov­ern­ment is shy­ing away from con­fronta­tion with him on the is­sue be­cause of the over­all chal­lenge he presents.Gov­ern­ment is head­ed for "licks" on that score among oth­ers when PNM's no-con­fi­dence mo­tion is de­bat­ed Mon­day.De­signed to tell the oth­er sto­ry of Gov­ern­ment, its tim­ing heads off PP's cel­e­bra­to­ry show­cas­ing of its suc­cess­es on Fri­day.

The Op­po­si­tion's own three-year an­niver­sary meets PNM with ris­ing stocks–from PP's mis­for­tunes–and the THA vic­to­ry fil­lip.But the PNM, like Gov­ern­ment, while al­so fix­ing and fur­ther­ing sys­tems and foun­da­tion strength­en­ing, has al­so been com­mit­ting faux pas, and fight­ing each oth­er plus Gov­ern­ment.

PNM chair­man Franklin Khan says un­der the Row­ley lead­er­ship PNM has grown "from strength to strength, re­vamp­ing sys­tems, strate­gies, poli­cies and con­sti­tu­tion." Re­work­ing of the Man­ning Vi­sion 2020 plan, 80 per cent com­plet­ed, will fin­ish by year end.

PNM in­sid­ers, how­ev­er, say the boost­ed im­age may be "smoke and mir­rors." Some are eye­ing PNM's 2014 lead­er­ship polls. Since PNM's tra­di­tion is to re­tain lead­ers when a gen­er­al elec­tion is near–2015–they ex­pect cur­rent lead­er­ship will re­main.