Masson’s change of heart

In response, Dr Masson has accused the UNC of creating "mischief" and flatly denied allegiance to any political party. He also pointed out that he has been an EBC member under PNM, NAR and UNC administrations.

Mr Panday, as evidence of Dr Masson’s supposed bias, points out that he was the only EBC member who resigned when in 2001 the PNM launched a campaign alleging bias and corruption on the part of the EBC. Dr Masson has said that he resigned as a matter of principle — because he felt that the public had lost confidence in the EBC.

Dr Masson, however, is not entirely right in accusing the UNC of being mischievous. Mischief is only the Opposition’s secondary motive. What they have decided to do is adopt a strategy similar to that used by the PNM in the 2000 election. Back then, the PNM accused the UNC of voter-padding, an accusation which led to several arrests made, in retrospect, with an unseemly enthusiasm by the police.

We say this because, despite the many people who were arrested and charged, there has been no follow-up four years later nor has a single person been jailed. Additionally, the PNM won the election handsomely, so if the UNC was voter-padding, they didn’t do a very good job.

Moreover, having gotten into office, the PNM regime did not make it a priority to clean up the supposedly corrupt EBC. It therefore seems fair to say that the PNM adopted a political strategy that had no basis and, in the process, attacked one of the fundamental institutions of Trinidad and Tobago’s democracy.

It is therefore a little curious that Dr Masson should have agreed to return to the EBC five years later. Did anything happen in that time to make him think that the public now had confidence in the EBC? If so, he needs to specify what changed, apart from his replacing the former chairman, Raoul John. And yet, as we have noted, there is no evidence four years later that the PNM’s accusations held any water.

Additionally, it is not enough for Dr Masson to say he is not biased.

As the first principal of the John Donaldson Technical Institute and a Permanent Secretary in the Education Ministry under Dr Eric Williams, the perception of PNM partisanship is inevitable.

At the same time, the UNC did not raise Dr Masson’s PNM background as a defence when it was being accused of voter-padding, so it seems that their concerns about bias have come quite late in the day.

It is also not clear what the Opposition hopes to attain by this strategy, unless they plan to accuse the PNM of stealing the next election in the case of a loss. And, of course, they may be genuinely concerned that the EBC is biased. However this plays out, though, there is one outcome that is almost certain — the public will once again lose confidence in a crucial institution.