JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed is de­scrib­ing the pro­ce­dur­al er­ror that led to the fail­ure of Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ pri­vate mo­tion in Par­lia­ment as an overzeal­ous mis­take, but says it al­so high­lights deep­er or­gan­i­sa­tion­al prob­lems with­in the Op­po­si­tion, which he be­lieves is not op­er­at­ing as a co­he­sive unit.

The er­ror prompt­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to mock the Op­po­si­tion in a Face­book post.

“This has to be the dumb­est ver­sion of the PNM ever. Have a won­der­ful week­end, every­one,” she wrote.

Re­spond­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks, Mo­hammed said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) con­tin­ues to strug­gle to find its foot­ing as an ef­fec­tive Op­po­si­tion.

“I con­tin­ue to see that the PNM is strug­gling. The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is strug­gling with ef­fec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion. They are al­so strug­gling to find their foot­ing in be­ing an ef­fec­tive Op­po­si­tion. Why are they un­co­or­di­nat­ed?” he said.

Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed the par­ty has not ful­ly ex­am­ined the rea­sons be­hind its elec­tion de­feat.

“To this date, I don’t think they have put for­ward an analy­sis for them­selves as to why and what led to them los­ing. So even if the Gov­ern­ment might, and I would say might or may be do­ing some­thing, quote, un­quote, wrong, you’re not get­ting an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­ro­gate the Gov­ern­ment be­cause you’re not do­ing it ef­fec­tive­ly. That is a prob­lem that we have.”

While stress­ing that he is not ad­vo­cat­ing for Gon­za­les to be re­moved from his po­si­tion, Mo­hammed said the par­ty may need to con­sid­er al­ter­na­tive lead­er­ship in the Op­po­si­tion ranks.

“Maybe it might not be a bad idea for Camille Robin­son-Reg­is to sit in the chair. Maybe you might get a more co­or­di­nat­ed Op­po­si­tion. Maybe you may get one that is a lit­tle more mea­sured. Maybe you may get one that pro­vides rea­son­ing and po­lit­i­cal the­atrics with a bal­ance.”

He added that the Op­po­si­tion ap­pears to be op­er­at­ing as in­di­vid­u­als rather than a co­he­sive unit.

“They can­not ex­pect to get any­thing out of the Op­po­si­tion in terms of ef­fec­tive­ness if they come across as un­co­or­di­nat­ed, un­pre­pared, lack­ing in cau­cus and not hav­ing prop­er align­ment. It is not like they don’t have peo­ple in the par­ty who know how to do it.”

For­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the par­ty’s per­for­mance.

“I just want to say that it is a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment in the way the lead­er­ship is han­dling mat­ters in the par­ty. That’s what I would say. There’s a big dis­ap­point­ment in the way the par­ty is be­ing led and we have to re­al­ly take a step back and re­assess our po­si­tion as a par­ty.”

Ad­dress­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s crit­i­cism, Ford said par­lia­men­tary er­rors were not un­com­mon.

“There are so many faux pas in the his­to­ry of Par­lia­ment. I don’t see how this one could be the dumb­est.”

He al­so not­ed that Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly made a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dur­al slip.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James dis­missed the con­tro­ver­sy as in­signif­i­cant, ar­gu­ing that the pub­lic is fo­cused on more press­ing is­sues.

“The coun­try it­self should not be de­tained or de­layed by the fact that the Prime Min­is­ter has such a view, un­flat­ter­ing, I must say, of the PNM. The PNM will have to re­spond, I sup­pose, if they think it nec­es­sary. But the point is, it’s noth­ing re­al­ly to de­tain the pop­u­la­tion, to make the pop­u­la­tion stop what they’re do­ing and fo­cus on what is ar­rant non­sense.”