tough talk, tough battle
Analysis
VOTERS of the United Kingdom trek to the polls today in a general election that’s widely feared could result in a hung parliament with the incumbent Labour Party of Prime Minister Gordon Brown admittedly being the ‘underdogs’ in a tight three-way contest.

However, across in Trinidad and Tobago, where the 1995 general election, called by Prime Minister Patrick Manning, had resulted in a hung parliament, there seems to be no fears of such a political repetition at the coming May 24 poll.

With nominations for the 41-member House of Representatives concluded this past Monday, the battle between Manning’s incumbent People’s National Movement (PNM) and Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s United National Congress-led “People’s Partnership” coalition seems set to result in a clear and decisive winner.

Having felt compelled to call the May 24 poll and, consequently abandoning – even before mid-term – the mandate his PNM had secured with a landslide 26-15 victory in November 2007, Manning could either remain in power with a working majority – or suffer a humiliating defeat, as some commentators are predicting.

Confronted with the spreading popular momentum for the mere fortnight-old “People’s Partnership” coalition; there must be that haunting spectre of deja vu 1986-style when the PNM was crushed by an electoral tidal wave of the then National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) with ANR Robinson and Basdeo Panday being in the frontline leadership.

The massive defeat had left the PNM with merely three of the 36 parliamentary seats – one of which was barely retained by Manning in the face of a controversial vote-count and threat of legal action.

That bit of political horror was avoided by the intervention of Robinson, who had emerged as Prime Minister.

By 1995, Robinson was to team up with then UNC founder-leader, Panday to form a coalition government following the 17-17 PNM-UNC tie for the 36-member House.

The rest is political history that covers a nine-year span of PNM governments from 2001 to the present.

It is doubtful that in 2010, Trinidad and Tobago could be heading in the direction of a hung-parliament election as in Britain where a Labour Prime Minister remained nervous up to last night (Wed) about surviving the rising popularity of the Conservative and Liberal parties.

Yet,  in party politics all things are possible.

LEADERSHIP CRISIS

Manning himself may have precipitated the leadership crisis that made necessary this month’s snap election.  However, while the fledgling anti-PNM “partnership”, “alliance” or “coalition” (take your pick) may not be the solid “unity force” as being marketed, it would be well advised against being too carried away by interpretations of a perceived “mood for change”.

The Prime Minister’s uneasy -some say tense – relations with Keith Rowley continues to be a problem for the PNM – beyond his Diego Martin-West constituency.

There,  Rowley remains popular enough not to dance to the political tunes as dictated by the “maximum” leader.

Nevertheless, as the negative vibes become more pronounced across PNM constituencies, Manning may feel pressured to make adjustments – however expedient – to embrace Rowley, perhaps to a point of embarrassing him.

The PNM leader may also find it tactical to “reconsider” his decision of over a week ago, against participating in a proposed live televised debate with the woman now anxiously awaiting to replace him as Prime Minister – the UNC’s Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

The dramatic occurrences so far in the election campaign have largely emerged within the UNC camp.
Its leader, “Kamla, “the magnet” for the rising popularity of the “partnership” (to quote Congress of People’s Winston Dookeran), continues to hammer away that the ‘old order’ was dying – both within her party and, as Manning likes to say, “the national community”.

VINDICTIVE?

Judgement could perhaps be postponed for now on the plus and minus factors that would have influenced her surprising decision  to exclude a significant number of well known allies of Basdeo Panday from the UNC’s list of 23 candidates.

Among the excluded victims were Panday’s brother (Subhas) and his daughter (Mickela) – both MPs in the last parliament.

On his PNM platform on Tuesday night in San Fernando, Prime Minister Manning claimed that the exclusion of Mickela Panday as a candidate should be a warning to his own PNM supporters of how “vindictive” the UNC leader could be.

He also counted it among political mistakes already made by Persad-Bissessar.

Other “mistakes” by her, in his assessment, were the quick embrace of  Herbert Volney for the marginal St. Joseph constituency, within 48 hours after he had quit as a Supreme Court judge of 14 years.

But the UNC leader seems unfazed by such criticisms, declaring that Manning was “panicking” and should resolve his own problems with Rowley who, she dared “to go on the same platform with Manning and endorse him as your leader….”
Having convincingly defeated Panday, her once “admirable political guru” for the UNC’s leadership last January, Kamla now appears to be determined to elevate her stature beyond narrow party politics.

She claims to be on the road to promote a new “political culture” and to make it abundantly clear that she was interested in  ” fundamental change…this woman is boss”.

From the platforms she emphasises that she wanted to be more than the leader of a major party or even to head a government.

This “Kamla”, the so-called “magnet for change” seems anxious to give meaning to a new political culture in Trinidad and Tobago, a country too long stuck in the mud of race-based and men-led politics and, of course, ‘bobol’ (corruption).

We shall see. There are 18 days yet to go for counting of the ballots, before we know the official composition of the new parliament.

But for tonight’s campaign meetings the major focus will most likely be on Keith Rowley when he speaks in his Diego Martin West constituency for the first time since being endorsed to remain the PNM’s candidate.

Rowley has been studiously keeping his silence on what will be his position in relation to the Manning leadership in government of which he was a most significant critic on highly controversial expenditures.  He has publicly stated that the PNM “faces a tough fight to win” on May 24.

He had declined to speak at the two PNM rallies this week for presentations of the party’s 42 candidates, a similar number to the ‘partnership coalition”.