PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad — Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday yesterday said that Trinidad and Tobago was saddled with a “lame duck government” and accused Prime Minister Patrick Manning of trying to buy political time by asking the country’s president to prorogue Parliament.

What Manning was seeking to do, said Panday, “is to buy political time by propping up a fallen government by a constitutional device”.

Manning late Saturday asked President A N R Robinson to prorogue Parliament and announced that within six months Trinidad and Tobago would hold fresh elections — the third balloting in three years.

Manning made the decision after his People’s National Movement (PNM) and the Opposition United National Congress (UNC), which each hold 18 seats in the Parliament, failed for a second day to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives.

“We have seen enough to convince us that the Opposition had no intention of electing a speaker, and so we thought that the interest of Trinidad and Tobago will be best served by ending the Parliament” and holding new elections, Manning said Saturday.

Trinidad and Tobago was thrown into a political crisis last December 10 after both the PNM and UNC each emerged from general elections with 18 seats of the 36-seat House of Representatives.

Robinson, the ceremonial head of state, was asked to settle the dispute and eventually named Manning prime minister. But Panday, whose UNC went into the election as the ruling party, objected and has been calling for fresh elections.

Panday, whose strategy has thwarted the PNM’s attempts to elect a Speaker during two acrimonious and amusing days of sittings of the House of Representatives at the weekend, maintains that for all practical purposes “the Manning government has fallen”.

“It has confirmed its failure to be in control of Parliament and, consequently, its inability to pass legislation,” he said.

Manning, however, continues to talk about a second attempt to convene Parliament for the election of a Speaker, and of remaining in Government until October 31, the absolute deadline when a new budget must be approved. Failing this, he must call new elections.

Yesterday, the Sunday Express newspaper, describing the prorogation as “a temporary respite”, said in an editorial:

“The truth is, as Mr Panday has rightly noted, if the PNM is unable to elect a Speaker in the House of Representatives it would have failed its first test as a government, bringing its moral legitimacy into question….”

The newspaper recalled that it was Manning and other leading figures of the PNM who had given the clear impression before the House met on Friday that the Government would succeed in electing a Speaker.

The prorogation created history as it was the first resulting from the failure to elect a Speaker. It also ended the life of the 31-member Senate after its first meeting last Friday, which took place with some of the president’s own independent nominees yet to take the oath of office.

– Rickey Singh and Associated Press