For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day says he isn't buy­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie's state­ment that late for­mer pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son had "ag­o­nised" over the UNC and PNM's 18-18 elec­tion dead­lock in 2001.Pan­day yes­ter­day re­mained un­re­pen­tant about his view of Robin­son.

Archie, at Thurs­day's fu­ner­al for Robin­son, said the for­mer pres­i­dent, try­ing to re­solve the 2001 dead­lock, had pre­pared sep­a­rate in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment for Pan­day and the PNM's Patrick Man­ning. They were con­tenders for the post of Prime Min­is­ter af­ter the tied elec­tion re­sult.Archie added that Robin­son "ag­o­nised prayer­ful­ly" on the sit­u­a­tion up to the "very last minute."Archie said he knew Robin­son was do­ing his best even if there were some who felt his best was not good enough.

De­scrib­ing Robin­son as a role mod­el and men­tor, Archie said he had had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to Robin­son about these and oth­er mat­ters.Robin­son even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed Man­ning as Prime Min­is­ter in­stead of Pan­day, who had been the in­cum­bent.Robin­son lat­er said his rea­sons for ap­point­ing Man­ning as prime min­is­ter was that on the ba­sis of "moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues," Man­ning was the bet­ter per­son to lead the Gov­ern­ment.

In his book In the Midst of It, Robin­son said he reached his con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with both Man­ning and Pan­day, both pri­vate­ly and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.He said his ref­er­ence to moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues was an ex­cerpt from the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion, and he had ap­point­ed Man­ning not on­ly be­cause of that but al­so "be­cause of the oath of of­fice which Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment had tak­en, on which he made the de­ci­sion."

Pan­day, who didn't at­tend Robin­son's fu­ner­al, said: "I don't know why he had to ag­o­nise at all. There was no rea­son to ag­o­nise. It was clear that the nat­ur­al de­ci­sion should have been in UNC's favour, since we had a ma­jor­i­ty and were the in­cum­bent."Ac­tu­al­ly I think he might have ag­o­nised as he was do­ing some­thing wrong. Had he not in­tend­ed to do any­thing wrong, there would have been no need to ag­o­nise."So I'm not buy­ing that," he added. "How can I?

"What the Chief Jus­tice didn't tell is what ex­act­ly Robin­son was ag­o­nis­ing about and what things he was tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion with his de­ci­sion then. He talked about moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues."Al­so the Chief Jus­tice didn't quite tell us what role he was play­ing. He wasn't CJ at the time, but had Robin­son at the time sought le­gal ad­vice, from him? And if so, what le­gal ad­vice did Archie give him?"

Man­ning was un­avail­able to com­ment on Archie's state­ments yes­ter­day, though his fam­i­ly de­nied a News­day re­port that he was out of the coun­try.Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said Archie's state­ment about Robin­son in­di­cat­ed the chal­lenges of be­ing a pres­i­dent and Robin­son was try­ing to do the job he was giv­en, which was his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.