Believe it, or not

The first PNM responses to Labour Minister Lawrence Achong’s resignation were as amusing as they were enlightening. “I will always be a team player,” Sports Minister Roger Boynes boasted to reporters, in what he probably thought the most suitable phrasing of his reaction, given his portfolio and all. Sports Minister, he might be, but Boynes is definitely no coach. Can’t he see that if a “team,” in this case, the PNM Cabinet/Government/party, in the natural gas game, is running toward one goal and a key member, is wearing his heart on the shirt sleeve of the other side, then that so-called team is in trouble? The squad’s fortunes can get no better if the captain, the Prime Minister, tries to red card the player’s wife because such penalisation shows that the leader himself is lacking team spirit. Achong was literally a man caught in the middle of a messy political match.

What else could he or should he have done? Should he have benched his wife, his conscience and his constituents for the sake of a team and of a game in which, given the PM’s actions toward him and his wife, he was not apparently even considered a real player. From spouting sporting lines Friday, Boynes moved to self-righteous declarations on patriotism in response to Achong’s departure from the PNM Cabinet. “I will always put the best interest of the country as a whole first,” he boasted from the political sidelines, immediately condemning Achong’s resignation as completely inimical to Trinidad and Tobago’s welfare.

However, what exactly had Achong done that had been so unpatriotic and so harmful to the “whole country’s best interests,” whatever these might be? As Labour Minister, he had been in total disagreement with Cabinet’s failure to implement one of the PNM’s campaign promises, the introduction of sectoral wages. Achong never even got the opportunity to argue his case before Cabinet and he was also excluded from the Cabinet committee set up to deliberate the issue. On Thursday, his Prime Minister announced that the time was not prudent for the implementation of the sectoral wage campaign promise because it would hurt the economy. With that pronouncement, Mr Manning must have believed that he had put his foot down and the matter to rest, but obviously it served only to convince the Labour Minister what he probably had already known: it was time to head off.

Should Achong have continued to work in such circumstances and against his beliefs just to be a “team” player? Was it not more principled of him to just say “no” to the Prime Minister and walk off the field? Didn’t his decision to leave put Mr Manning in a position to replace him with someone in line with Cabinet’s policies- driven I am beginning to suspect more by guarantees the Govern-ment has made to the US with regard to the supply of natural gas, than by any sudden worry about the state of the economy? Chairman of the PNM, Minister of Works and Transport Franklyn Khan was even more na?ve than his colleague, Boynes. He reportedly told the media that he had seen Achong in Parliament on the Friday — forgetting that Achong was still an MP — and that he, Khan felt news of his peer’s resignation as a Minister was “a mere rumour.” “I don’t want to believe it... I am sure it is an unconfirmed report,” the Works and Transport Minister allegedly said. “We have a lot of discipline in the PNM ...even if we have differences, there are ways to sort it out and I really don’t forecast resignation as an option.”

Khan’s first mistake was to confuse party/government discipline with doing whatever the boss orders, taking any ministry he hands you and believing that because the majority of the party or Cabinet may consider something right, that it is. And why did Khan not see resignation as an “option?” Did Achong sign his life and conscience over to the Prime Minister when he accepted his appointment as Labour Minister? His oath was not to Mr Manning, but to the country, its people and to its Constitution. He was expected to act within the confines of principle, even if such behaviour is shocking in a country where few give up the trappings of office for the sake of their beliefs. (What! No more cocktail parties?)

British Prime Minister Tony Blair lost several ministers because of his decision to invade Iraq; one Trini could walk out on Manning over his decision on sectoral wages. Wasn’t this what Westmin-ster and democracy was all about? Except that Blair could afford to wave goodbye to a few. Mr Manning had seen first hand what had happened to UNC Prime Minister Basdeo Panday at the hands of his UNC “Rebel Three”. In these days of slim majorities, Prime Ministers were losing their grip on maximum leadership. No wonder both party jefes were suddenly talking constitutional change. They were reading the writing on the wall.

Mr Manning now had three backbenchers and with a total of only 20 seats, this could make a Prime Minister very uncomfortable in his Lower House front row chair. Government backbenchers, if those in TT would behave as such, could introduce an original idea for legislation in the form of a Private Members’ Bill; they had more freedom to speak, not being constrained to the same extent by loyalty to the government. Fitzgerald Hinds, Eudine Job-Davis and now Lawrence Achong could pose problems for the whip, Ken Valley if they so wanted, when Valley tried to impose party or government discipline.

There were thousands of examples of administrations buckling to the will of the persistent, competent backbencher and the emergence of the true backbencher would be a welcome milestone in the political development of this nation. None of the three had to leave the party or become independent MPs to leave their mark on the congress and to do service to the nation. They could be a new sort of “team” player, the one that sought to score points for the people, instead of for their parties, their governments or for themselves.

Suzanne Mills is the editor of Newsday.