THE MATHEMATICS OF TT POLITICS

I mischievously wondered if he was a "closet UNC." There were a lot of these in Diego Martin and in the country ever since the Balisier had cast a shadow over the Rising Sun in 2002. Or perhaps, this youth man wasn’t UNC nor was he mortified at all. He could be just another of the large number of residents of Diego Martin, who were greatly disgruntled, if not damn angry with the PNM because of the ridiculously high level of crime and the impossibly high cost of living; and thus, he was willing to listen to the UNC, but definitely in no mood for pleasantries.

I wondered if the PNM MP for this particular corner of Diego, Ken Valley, who was affable enough, would have been able to gather 100 good citizens to listen to him on a Monday night, as the UNC had. Maybe. But if he did, what would he have to say to them? What could he talk about? The FTAA? To be fair to the MP though, an empty classroom would not have been his fault, not entirely. The people of Diego Martin, except the Balisier bearers, might not have gone to hear anyone who was a member of a Government, which appeared very much to have moved from inertia to a state of semi-collapse. And recently, the UNC Opposition was smelling blood so it wasn’t pulling any punches. It was taking every jab it could at the PNM and it was particularly enjoying hitting below the belt. With many Trinis loving a good bacchanal and the rest fed up with the PNM, you tell me? FTAA vs. corruption, which would draw the greater crowd?

And this was just the point of these weekly Opposition meetings, I concluded. From what I could see and hear on Monday, the intent of the UNC is to "level the corruption playing field" before the general election, which means that it is almost saying to the voters "look, the PNM is as corrupt as we were. No in fact, they are more corrupt." This political left hook is followed by a right, which is supposed to be the knockout punch: "if both of us t’ief, at least when we, the UNC, ran the country, there was no such thing as kidnapping and there wasn’t a murder a day. Plus you could buy food when you went to the supermarket."

So, this is where we have reached, I mused. Government by calculus where "X" is corruption and "Y" is efficiency and we have to figure out the exact combination of X and Y we want and need to run this country. Would the UNC’s strategy work, I wondered. It was too early to say. Some of the UNC’s barbs were very much on target. It had every right to claim to have had a better grip on crime and to question the cost overruns at the Scarborough Hospital; to note that jobs, contracts and legal briefs worth millions were being given to friends and family of the PNM and to observe the growing wealth of quite a few in Government, as rich as this was coming from Basdeo Panday’s UNC. The Opposition was correct to knock the business community for its new found concern for crime levels because for years this sector ignored the rising murder rate, even demanding that the press take crime off its front pages. Now, as Panday rightly pointed out, the cows had come home and so business had issued an ultimatum. What cheek!

But from where I sat on Monday night though, the Opposition might have wanted to steer clear of attacking Franklin Khan for resigning from the Cabinet. Khan’s rare decision to leave (Frankie must be watching CNN and BBC!) must have shocked the UNC and many others in TT, but given the serious nature of the allegations against him, what was Khan to do? If he had stayed in his post he’d never have been able to function as Minister of Works and Transport, never been able to make a decision without someone thinking about the "Dhansook bribe", not unless and until he was cleared by an investigation. And the UNC would have been calling for his head anyway. I would have also avoided noting that five Ministers and three state board chairmen have been "reported" to the Integrity Commission because although this might seem an extraordinary stain on the PNM’s reputation, Panday should remember that he turned a deaf ear to calls for probes into alleged corruption when he was Prime Minister.

There is something else the UNC and Basdeo Panday should keep in mind: every time Panday gets onto a platform to speak, it matters not how entertaining or charming he is; people see a $10 million dollar man. What this means is that as annoyed as many are with the PNM, many won’t vote for a UNC led by Basdeo Panday. Not even if he is repackaged as the six million-dollar man. Yes, this appears to be part three of the UNC strategy: let the public know that Panday is "bionically" fit for another term, that he’s still the mighty leader of the UNC and is going nowhere. Well, why else would two of its speakers on Monday night make a point of noting that Panday had out walked them, "men in their fifties", earlier in the day when the UNC was touring Tunapuna?

So where does all this "who t’ief more" and "who do more for the people" leave the voter? Nowhere, because he or she already knows they want a government which tends more to Y than X, that is to say, an administration that leans toward to efficiency rather than corruption. They just can’t find a party that gets the equation right.

suz@itrini.com <mailto:suz@itrini.com>