Recently I wrote about Kamla's plummeting popularity, according to Nacta, and the need to turn this around by winning the approval of a thinking middle-class intelligentsia which is steadily growing and which will make the difference in the next elections.
I acknowledged also that the popular choice of Carmona for President and her demonstration of strong leadership in rejecting Jack's "senatorial" misstep were moves in the right direction.
But one step forward and two backwards, for lo and behold, one of her senior officials comes out with a now typically foot-in-mouth announcement about the highway report–suggesting a resumption of work–before it was actually signed and published.
Now there is hardly anyone with illusions about the cost overruns arising from this delay, nor about the politics of completing the highway before the next elections; and let's face it, notwithstanding some of Kublalsingh's issues, the highway will be a definite plus in many ways.
The Government needs to get this highway built, but couldn't this official critically evaluate the present circumstances and recognise that any premature announcement would only raise a hornet's nest–which it has–which this Government can ill afford?
What is at stake here is not whether the official would have drawn the right conclusions from the report, but this premature announcement would have given thinking people just cause to question the Government's credibility and trustworthiness.
The Government must win on this issue for it can't turn back now, but in its present unpopular circumstances, the politics demands dialogue over major concerns and evidence that a real effort is being made to address those concerns.
This announcement does just the opposite; it gives a sense that the Government does not really care and is quite prepared to go back on its word and isn't this a fatal flaw as the incumbent Tilman Thomas' fate in Grenada amply demonstrates?
Kamla dropped from 73 per cent to 43 per cent in her popularity ratings, according to Nacta, not in the eyes of the grassroots, for with her ethnic enclave she will always be 100 per cent. But there are people across the divide (and they amount to a whopping 30 per cent) who want to trust her leadership just as they did in 2010.
Many around her, however, are just squandering that goodwill. Carmona and the rejection of Jack's faux pas are two great feathers in her cap! She must again show strong leadership in turning around this gross misstep of one of her own.
Dr Errol Benjamin
