Deja vu

By Suzanne Mills

Opposition Whip Ken Valley might have hit the nail squarely on the head on Friday when he pointed at the Government benches and observed that the United National Congress MPs were a "hapless, sorry bunch, inflicted on the citizenry."

After a week of slinging mud at each other, the Government members on Friday looked like participants in a farce, people pretending to be an effective administration when they were really part of a Government on its last legs, even if its MPs were all seated on the same side of the House of Representatives of the stillborn Sixth Parliament of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

The UNC MPs didn’t even appear to have the energy to fend off the attack from the Opposition People’s National Movement, not after days and nights of fighting each other. They were a ragged lot. Not even the backbenchers seemed interested in heckling.

How could they be anything but lacklustre when in front of them their political leader and deputy leader were sitting as far apart as the space between their seats would permit? Neither man uttered a word to the other. Prime Minister Basdeo Panday turned his back to his Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj. Maharaj concentrated on his paperwork, smiling only at the jibes coming from the PNM benches. In the good old days, the two men would have been going at the PNM together. They would be leaned toward each other, mouths covered, talking in hushed tones. On Friday they looked as if they could not bear the sight of each other.

The only UNC man who seemed to have any interest in the proceedings was MP for Tunapuna, Mervyn Assam. Assam, wearing his foreign affairs cap, was piloting a bill with the cumbersome title of "An Act to give effect to the Free Trade Agreement between the Caribbean Community and the Gov-ernment of the Dominican Republic."

After an earnestly arrogant contribution, Assam took his seat, only to see his bill used by Valley to exploit the UNC’s present problems. The Govern-ment MP was incensed. Valley, he said, was treating his bill like a circus.

But what did Assam expect? The Government has erected its own big top and the country’s citizens are being treated to shows at all hours of the day and night. Did Assam really anticipate that anyone would take the UNC or any of its bills seriously, as important as that legislation might be? Did Assam think that after his performance at the Crowne Plaza this week that those who lined up early on Friday afternoon to get into the public gallery were there to listen to him drone on about market access? Or were they there to see how he and his peers treated the four dissident MPs? Did he believe that the press gallery couldn’t hold another scribe because he was giving a dissertation on economic policy? Did the UNC MP think that the PNM would stick to the theme at hand and let an opportunity of sweet revenge slip through its hands? Assam would wait for PNM clemency for as long as he would wait for the AG to respond to his gushing on Friday over Maharaj’s provision of a headquarters for the Caribbean Court of Justice.

On Friday Assam was flying high on his Government’s trade and foreign policies. He was quickly brought to earth. Assam had been going on about the importance of the telecommunications sector when PNM MP for Laventille East/Morvant, Fitzgerald Hinds, shouted that telecommunications was so important for the Govern-ment that it had just fired its Tele-communications Minister, Ralph Maraj. Worse, Hinds said, the UNC had passed the Telecommunications Bill, 2001 in the absence of the PNM for at the time of the Bill’s debate in the Lower House, the Opposition was protesting the expulsion of its MP, Dr Keith Rowley, and had boycotted the sitting.

Assam responded to Hinds by observing that no one had deprived the PNM of its right to participate in the Telecommunications debate. Its members had chosen to "drink bush tea for someone else’s fever."

"That’s what you are doing now!" whip Valley roared back at him, reminding Assam of his ardent defence of the Prime Minister.

There. The rift was now out of the closet. Valley had finally articulated what everyone had come to see. Before that moment, the House had been going through the motions. Papers were laid, Ministers answered questions, the House met in Finance Committee.

But the ugly crack in the House of the Rising Sun could not be kept hidden. And Valley’s "bush tea" retort would be his first of many references to the Government’s internal war. The oft-clumsy PNM MP was quick footed on Friday.

Why wouldn’t he be? The PNM was watching the unbelievable happen. The UNC was self-destructing less than a year after winning the general election. The PNM only had to pick up the pieces. On Friday its MPs — all save Colm Imbert — were dressed in dark colours as if they had come for a burial. They undoubtedly smelt blood as four UNC MPs were now talking about issues that the PNM had been trying to drive home for more than five years. Valley thought he would help their cause by telling the House that the current fighting in the Government had nothing to do with a contest for leadership. The battle was one against corruption. It was a struggle for democracy, he said.

His leader Patrick Manning seemed to be feeling like a man who had at last been redeemed after years of ridicule by the population. On hearing Valley reminisce about Sunday morning consultations held at the Prime Minister’s residence when he, Manning was at the helm, the PNM leader looked down the Government front row toward UNC MP for Oropouche, Trevor Sudama, one of the four dissidents.

"Sudama, when last you went to the Prime Minister’s residence?" he asked laughing.

Sudama smiled back. He didn’t have to answer that question. Sudama had already confessed to the population that he had been scratched off the Pandays’ guest list a long time ago. At the time of his revelation he seemed unperturbed by the snub. On Friday he was as equally unruffled by the PNM’s barbs, perhaps because these were less venomous than those coming from his peers, one of whom, Manohar Ramsa-ran, told the media that Sudama suffered from dropsy.

Valley may have been right to dub the UNC hapless. It was indeed unfortunate that Assam expected respect for his bill when the nation is either too occupied or exhausted by the Govern-ment’s antics to grant it or its legislation the slightest bit of esteem.