The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment has gone on elec­tion mode an­tic­i­pat­ing, it seems, an ear­ly elec­tion. What pos­si­ble ra­tio­nale is there for this move? It can't be due to the Prime Min­is­ter's sug­ges­tion be­cause she has cate- gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ed this op­tion, in­sis­tent on ful­fill­ing the peo­ple's five-year man­date, and of course heed­ing the lessons of his­to­ry. One ra­dio caller, per­haps rep­re­sent­ing the views of many, has face­tious­ly sug­gest­ed that there will be no ear­ly elec­tion be­cause Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not Patrick Man­ning. Are there prob­lems with­in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to com­pel such an op­tion? Hard­ly, for de­spite the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's con­tin­u­ing pre­ten­sions to as­sert its po­si­tion in the PP, as ear­ly as this week, it does not have the nu­mer­i­cal su­pe­ri­or­i­ty to force the PM's hand in­to call­ing an ear­ly elec­tion.

Can the present volatil­i­ty with­in the labour move­ment and the per­ceived dis­en­chant­ment with the SoE pre­cip­i­tate an ear­ly elec­tion? Pos­si­ble, but high­ly im­prob­a­ble, for there seems suf­fi­cient good­will still ex­ist­ing among a large sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause of the Gov­ern­ment's so­cial pro­grammes, as for ex­am­ple Colour Me Or­ange and hous­ing re­lief, and of course the in­evitable eth­nic sup­port, to counter any such fall­out. Is the PNM hi­er­ar­chy aware of any on­com­ing event or com­bi­na­tion of events, still un­known to the pop­u­lace, that would like­ly com­pel an ear­ly elec­tion? Maybe, but one can't re­al­ly say. One may ar­gue that this is prepa­ra­tion for an elec­tion in the long term, but isn't there the ques­tion of tim­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, with the ef­fort los­ing steam down the road when it should be build­ing in­to a cres-cen­do?

If none of the above re­al­ly ap­plies, or has lim­it­ed ap­pli­ca­tion, is the mo­tive more psy­cho­log­i­cal, an ir­re­press­ible de­sire by the PNM to re­gain the pow­er it en­joyed for so long and not be­ing able to come to terms with los­ing it? The for­mer PM's pre­ten­sions at lead­er­ship, even though there is an­oth­er in that po­si­tion, wreaks of a kind of po­lit­i­cal ta­ban­ca for of­fice. Is this kind of ir­ra­tional­i­ty more per­va­sive than it seems among oth­er gov­ern­ment de­trac­tors, so much so as to de­lude them­selves in­to think­ing that an ear­ly elec­tion is in the off­ing and they must pre­pare for it, when every rea­son­able con­sid­er­a­tion sug­gests the con­trary?

Dr Er­rol Ben­jamin

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