Different elections

BECAUSE local government bodies no longer impact seriously on the lives of citizens and their major concerns, these corporations are mostly taken for granted. That is why elections to fill their councils do not generally generate the kind of popular interest and involvement that general elections do. For the most part, in any case, their results have been fairly predictable, following the pattern set by the national ballot. However, recent political events have set the stage for a more significant contest come July 14, with the PNM back firmly in power and the UNC reeling in defeat and still dogged by an apparently endless series of huge corruption scandals. So that instead of being a routine affair, the next local government elections, for one thing, seems to hold considerable interest as another test of the impact which the on-going revelations of mismanagement and corruption within the former UNC regime are having among the party’s supporters. How genuinely disenchanted are they, and is their disenchantment strong enough to turn them away from the polls on July 14? And if so, is there a chance that, for the very first time in these elections, the PNM will make inroads into traditionally held UNC councils?

For another thing, the UNC now seems to be a party in shambles, unable to weather the storm of adjustment, transformation and the creation of a new image, lacking the internal vigour to deal with the critical problem of leadership, at a loss to produce a cohesive programme for the country’s advancement and relying once again on a policy of obstruction based on tiresome visceral appeals to ethnicity and ill-founded allegations of racial discrimination. Can the support of the party be sustained on that kind of impotence and watery diet? Maybe the results of the coming elections will tell us. On the other hand, Prime Minister Patrick Manning is using the elections campaign to continue the corruption broadside and to announce a number of decisions that should please a large section of the population. Removing the anomaly that exists between the quantums of NIS and Old Age pensions is certainly one of them. Thousands of citizens who have been collecting pensions of $400 monthly and less from the contributory national scheme will be happy to learn that from October 1 they will receive $1,000, the same as old age pensioners. This newspaper has become quite nauseated by the depth and comprehensiveness of the corruption scandals still being exposed from the era of the UNC regime. The reports cause us to wonder whether there were any transactions at all undertaken by the UNC government which were not tainted by the apparently consuming desire by persons to get rich through the influence of their office, at public expense or through the solicitation of “improper considerations.”

Speaking at an elections rally in Woodford Square on Saturday, Mr Manning disclosed the extent of the InnCogen scandal by charging that the “dangerous Short Pants Man” whom he did not identify but  described as “a main player” in the deal, received $21 million as a finder’s fee. He added: “This very notorious Short Pants Man deposited very significant sums of money in United States dollars into the foreign account of a former Minister and his wife.” The PM told his audience that when they learn who the former Minister and his wife are, they would be “shocked and ashamed.” But while it may be well and good for the government to expose these matters to the public, particularly at this time, we are really not impressed with the desire or commitment to resolve these scandals in a proper or satisfactory way. If taxpayers have been robbed of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, when will the guilty parties be brought to justice?