Party problems re the next elections
By Dr. Winford James
August 14, 2005
Posted: September 20, 2005
It's two years before general elections are due - a very long time in politics - but two problems in particular are so besetting the incumbent PNM administration that it would be no surprise if PM Manning were to call the elections prematurely. The problems are runaway food prices and unstoppable violent crime, especially kidnapping and murder. No countermeasure the administration has tried has worked, and they now seem to be at their wits' end where new workable solutions are concerned, especially solutions for kidnappings and murders. If oil prices were not so high and the unemployment rate not so low, popular discontent would have been so widespread and strident that the PNM would have found it impossible to govern without a renewed mandate.
The price of oil, now over US$60 per barrel, is saving them for the time being; and the implacable cloud of corruption over the UNC plus the party's disarray over Panday's moral fitness to lead are a generous lagniappe. But if the PNM are brave enough to hold out until the end of the statutory term, they might find public disenchantment with unmanageable food prices and their inability to turn the crime situation around to be greater than public alienation from Panday and public fear of UNC corruption.
Two more years of those two problems seems too scary and daunting, reassuring oil dollars notwithstanding. Suppose a majority of the electorate began to think that the UNC can't do worse on food prices and crime than the PNM? Suppose they began to entertain the thought that the UNC have learnt that corruption doesn't pay and, further, that the party would be a credible alternative if only it could rid itself of the millstone that Panday has become? Suppose other problems developed to compound the situation, as they can according to Murphy's Law - problems like ministerial corruption and factionalism?
Better to call early elections and not take those chances, oui.
For their part, the UNC must be wondering how they can capitalize on the woeful ineptitude of the PNM in the face of our two problems. As the administration three elections ago and as a party thrown into the wilderness of opposition by public dismay over many bold and bald acts of apparent corruption at the highest levels of the hierarchy, they know they face an uphill battle. They know many will vote them on the basis of ethnicity, regardless of the stain of corruption (after all, the PNM had had the experience before them!). They know that, in spite of the corruption, they performed credibly on infrastructural development and innovative social and economic policy.
But they too had two besetting problems: 1) how to rid themselves of a leader who was harming the credibility of the party through clinging charges of very serious corruption, and 2) how to reclaim the image of seriousness and responsibleness when there were crucial pieces of legislation which they had either conceptualized and developed or adopted and developed while in government, only to reject them in opposition to the consternation of many, including some in their own ranks.
Because of the considerable conflation of party and Panday, and because of Panday's dwarfing of a possible successor (save and except for the seriously damaged Ramesh), they find themselves having to walk extremely gingerly around him when they think he should walk away in time for the party to catch itself, and, if he doesn't, what they really want to do is to summon the political fortitude to kick him into retirement.
Time was running out; Panday was hanging around to make sure that, among other things, Ramesh stayed out; the party hierarchy was deeply divided; and it was lacking in both the tenor and composure to promote itself effectively as a better performer on crime.
What a thing! What a conundrum! The ruling party witless about how to stop unmanageable food prices and escalating violent crime, and thinking it might have to call a premature, possibly snap election. And the opposition party bowed down by a seriously contaminated leader and witless about how to exploit the precious opportunity of the ruling party's ineptitude.
Two years is a long, long time for the PNM, but a short, short time for the UNC.
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