Yet an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy has had to be dealt with by the Prime Min­is­ter. Gov­ern­ments of the past, present and no doubt the fu­ture have had, and will have their fair share. Deal­ing with it is the dif­fer­ence. It is sig­nif­i­cant that two in­di­vid­u­als fea­tured in the down­fall of the PNM in 1995, the UNC in 2001, and are threat­en­ing the tenure of the present Govt, which should now re­flect and con­tem­plate on the way for­ward.

Ar­ro­gance and haugh­ti­ness must not be al­lowed to creep in, and this lat­est in­ci­dent is a wake-up call for all the sleep­ers in par­lia­ment. The UNC alone is not the gov­ern­ment. The COP is a part of it al­so. There are min­is­ters and sen­a­tors, and their mem­bers en­joy the spoils of gov­ern­ment. But the minute the gov­ern­ment does not look good, their first stance is to dis­tance them­selves.

The peo­ple vot­ed for this part­ner­ship and they have to check on each oth­er, not turn and run each time ob­sta­cles present them­selves. Stand­ing their ground and de­mand­ing a bet­ter gov­ern­ment and a bet­ter coun­try can nev­er be gut­less. Bring­ing a law that would al­low per­sons to be set free with­out a tri­al is gut­less and the easy way out, and the en­tire Par­lia­ment is re­spon­si­ble, as im­prove­ments to the ju­di­cia­ry is what is re­quired. Run­ning a coun­try is chal­leng­ing and we must show that we are up to this chal­lenge. We do not have to ex­tri­cate our­selves in or­der to de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The onus is on these politi­cians to show their char­ac­ter and strength of re­solve and to demon­strate that coali­tion pol­i­tics can be suc­cess­ful, oth­er­wise it's back to one par­ty take all.

Ramesh Mara­jh

Pa­lo Seco