NOW that Prime Minister Patrick Manning has called a snap general election, even before the middle of his People’s National Movement’s five-year term, the pertinent question is not when will he announce the election date, but why face the electorate now?

Leader of the main opposition United National Congress (UNC), lawyer Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who is being increasingly described in the local media as the likely first woman prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, has provided an answer that perhaps fits into her strategy for the coming bruising election campaign.

She said that Manning had taken the “coward’s way out” to avoid facing a no-confidence motion, standing in her name against him, which was scheduled for debate in the House of Representatives on Friday, April 9.

The motion would have provided the opportunity to make use of claimed ‘documentary evidence’ of more than deep corruption involving the Government and the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDECOTT), as well as linkages between the PNM administration and a controversial church and its leader.

But Manning chose to ask President George Maxwell to dissolve the Parliament, effective from midnight on Thursday, which effectively pre-empted the no-confidence motion being debated in the House of Representatives on Friday.

It may be tempting to accept the UNC leader’s political spin on the assumption that she is now waiting in the wings to become the country’s next prime minister, and that she would have succeeded in securing passage of the no-confidence motion.

However, she well knows that in the 41-member House of Representatives the PNM held a solid 26-15 majority, and even if a few parliamentarians on the government’s benches either abstained or vote against (and this itself was doubtful), Manning would easily have survived the no-confidence vote.

Against this background, the question remains: Why rush the dissolution of parliament with at least two more years and seven months before a new general election is due?

Narrowed options

Offering what is considered a plausible explanation, Reginald Dumas — Trinidad and Tobago’s former ambassador to Washington and high commissioner to Barbados and the OECS sub-region, and currently a respected social commentator – said to me on Friday:

“It is not a case of fearing defeat over the no-confidence motion. The harsh reality is that Prime Minister Manning had no option but to advise the president to dissolve parliament…

“It is evident that his troubles and trials are increasing and the longer he waits to call a new general election, his problems will only get worse. His political options have been considerably narrowed in the face of growing public discontent and conflicting signals within his own administration and party.”

It would also be reasonable to think that in securing the dissolution of parliament, the embattled Manning may well have succeeded in shifting some of the expanding pressures surrounding him and his administration.

For it is to be expected that with focus on a snap poll, much pressure would now be on Persad-Bissessar’s UNC and the leader of the Congress of People (COP), Winston Dookeran, economist and former governor of the Trinidad and Tobago Central Bank.

Their immediate challenge is to give substance to their stated recognition of the imperatives of “opposition unity” for a single party challenge to replace the PNM -whenever the snap election takes place.

When the UNC, under the leadership of its founder and former prime minister Basdeo Panday, and Dookeran’s COP contested the November 2007 general election against the PNM in a three-way battle, they together polled 43,653 more popular votes than the incumbent, which had secured its 26 parliamentary seats with less than 50 per cent of the total votes – approximately 46 per cent.

While the then fledgling COP had secured an impressive 248,041 votes (almost 23 per cent of the ballots cast), it failed to gain a single seat under the prevailing first-past-the-post electoral system.

The UNC has obtained its 15 seats with 194,425 votes, or approximately 30 per cent of total valid ballots. The PNM’s 26 seats came from 299,813 votes, or almost 46 per cent of the voting electorate.

Opposition unity

In the circumstances, given the multiple challenges facing his government over increasing allegations of public corruption, poor fiscal management, fears over diminishing energy resources — the lifeblood of the economy — plus a persistent crime epidemic; depressing problems of pure water supply and levels of unemployment and poverty, Prime Minister Manning perhaps figures a snap poll could place his opponents on the defensive.

If they fail to form a unity front soon that is based on principles with strong public appeal, rather than engage in expedient leadership manoeuvrings, then the UNC and COP could only prove Manning to be quite politically astute and leave themselves open to ridicule as playing games in the face of seeming national discontent and cries of “time for change”.

It should also be noted that while Manning may yet encounter some difficulties in the screening of potential PNM candidates for the coming poll (accepting or rejecting, for example, the unanimous nomination for Diego Martin West incumbent and former cabinet minister Keith Rowley), the UNC’s screening committee may face an even more troubling situation.

This would include what to do about ex-leader Panday and three of the UNC parliamentarians who remained loyal to him up to the dissolution of parliament. They include Panday’s daughter, Mickela, a lawyer; and his former Attorney General Ramesh Maharaj.

The multiple political bumps on the road to the coming election therefore pose various problems for both the incumbent PNM and the yet-to-be-united opposition comprising the current UNC and COP.