What was in your head? - The Peter O'Connor Column

How time flies when you are having fun!

It seems like just three short weeks ago that Colm Imbert dismissively sneered at Kamla’s leadership potential.

“With her as their leader, the PNM will rule for the next twenty five years!” he said.

Well look at how fast those 25 years have passed? I hardly feel a day older. However, poor Colm, and his cohorts, have not weathered their ageing so well.

Look at how the mighty, and the self-proclaimed chosen by God have fallen. And only they—in their blindness, deafness and their arrogance, could not see it coming.

What was in their Leader’s head, to carry them all over the cliff like that? What was wrong with all of them—to follow so fatally blindly?

I really agonized about what to write this Sunday: Congratulations to Kamla, for Rising to the occasion, from January 24th through May 24th? Thanks to Jack, for removing Panday, Manning and for lagniappe—Ramesh Maharaj—from the political scene?

Those would have been uplifting, forward moving themes.

But all the while, stuck in my craw, and in my pen, there was Patrick Manning, and the apparent madness which has been driving him these past several months.

And if we wondered at his sanity when he dissolved parliament, and twisted his explanations over the ensuing weeks, what can we make of his reaction to the resounding defeat he brought upon his Party, and his blindly loyal colleagues?

I am not among those who believed he called the election because he feared a “palace coup” over the Motion of No Confidence. That bunch who sat on Manning’s side of the House were, in my opinion, simply too dumb to know that they could have voted against him.

And in any case, trained pot-hounds do not bite their master. Too bad they could not have been trained in competence as well as in blind loyalty.

I believed that he could not face the revelations that were going to be read into Hansard during the debate. I said in this column, on Sunday 11th April, that Manning had been inspired by his Prophetess, her advice based on her personal interest regarding her Lighthouse Temple, to call the election.

And I wrote that on Thursday 8th April, adding “For the immediate future we can look forward to parliament being prorogued on Friday 9th, thus cutting off all debate…”

Parliament was prorogued at midnight that night! Then, having made himself look like the coward he truly was, “running” from the debate—actually running from all debates!—he had to try to find another reason for what he had done.

So he came up with his “Circling the dates” revelation, when he claimed that he had sat alone, last October, and began circling dates in his 2010 diary - some circles to fool spies and traitors, and two secret circles— April 9th and May 24th—to prorogue parliament and to hold the election!

Does anyone believe that? Conrad, Colm, Karen, Neil, Marlene, Hazel—anyone? Do you really believe that?

And what, if anything, did his colleagues say to him when he bus’ the election news on them? Did anyone say “Boss, you mad or what—we will lose!” or was such dissent cut off with a wifely simper: “The Prime minister has spoken!”, while Marlene thumped the table in feigned approval.

That Manning was allowed to take all of them, apparently willingly, into political suicide speaks volumes about the government from which we have been rescued.
For make no mistake about it, if you had put sense out of your head on Election Day and put the Manning Version of the PNM back in power, where do you think you would have been today?

You would have already been regaled with ranting sermons about how God had called him to save T&T. You would have seen the Lighthouse Temple of the False Prophets accelerate to its crowning completion, all paid for by your money “billed” into Manning’s Palace.

You would have seen Rowley shunted into back-bench oblivion, and then quietly dumped in the next election. And who knows—Calder Hart on the Integrity Commission?

And is not me who say so—is Manning self (sic). But if any of you doubted my assertion that Manning was mad (see my column 16 Nov. 2008—“Is Manning Mad?”), before Election Day, what do you think of him since?

“HE” has no regrets. This is all about “HIM”, not the country, not the Party, not those blindly loyal supporters who Manning has betrayed. And he has not even apologized to those pathetic sycophants who cheered themselves into oblivion.

Surely, I cannot be alone when I wonder: What was in his head? Ask your psychiatrist! Peter's columns also appear in NEWSDAY.