By Stephen Kangal
August 05, 2014
PM Kamla: “…The election of this government has changed the political landscape. The expectation of the public that something will be done when wrongs are committed in public office are now the hallmarks of good governance…”.
The standard of political accountability changes according to the regime because after four years the PNM that was rejected in 2010 on the platform of persistent wrong-doing may be on the cusp of returning to Whitehall in spite of all the numerous wrongdoings it has visited on the people of T&T.
Speech-writers are putting words in the mouth of the PM under the illusion that we are a gullible population and that there is consensus or unanimity on what constitutes wrong-doing. The commission of ministerial wrong-doing and its constituent elements changes according to spin concocted by the regime in power and its cadre of spin doctors.
In my observation wrong-doing and speaking generally, under the UNC and its various permutations, wrong-doing only has to be 50% wrong to be considered wrong whereas under the PNM wrong-doing has to attain the 200% threshold before it is considered to be wrong albeit by 70% of the electorate.
Accordingly I do not believe that a new political landscape/ conjuncture that is moral rectitude based, has been established under the regime of the PP. This is a temporary phenomenon because if this population is unanimous, consistent in their perception and definition of political and moral wrong-doing and this wrong-doing has been rejected, how can the PNM’s political stocks be on the up-swing post-Calder Hart, the $55m Scholarship Slush Fund, property tax, rapid rail’s $1/2 billion initial survey etc?
Do we have to factor in our ratio dicidendi and modus operandi the short-memory culture/political illiteracy of the electorate that firstly, cannot count beyond two electorally speaking and secondly, its very persistent viral infection of short memory that does not extend beyond four years now?
In the pre-1986 period wrong-doing did not exist at all. It was a case of electoral rubber-stamping because the country was not yet ready for an Indian Prime Minister or a South of the Caroni River regime.
My thesis is that one sound of the syngal does not augur the imminence of the rainy season which when translated means that one swallow does not the summer make. There is no fundamental or radical change in the sub-terrain of the current political landscape that can be attributed to or claimed by the PP at present.