People's National Movement

They say a week is a long time in politics.  A week ago, I thought the main news item that would've occupied the front-burner would've been the Guardian's reporting of a top government official being fingered in an alleged conspiracy to wilfully pervert the course of public justice in relation to charges against two former People’s National Movement ministers.  Or the criticisms of Hon.

According to reports, PNM and Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley criticised the government's handling of the threat posed by Tropical Storm Tomas, describing it as an over-reaction.  Dr Rowley delivered the criticism during his feature address at the PNM's Women in Politics seminar at Balisier House on Sat 30 Oct 2010.  The stories may be found in the Trinidad Express,

The local government manifestos released by the various parties for the elections on 26 Jul 2010 may be found below:

When Dr. Rowley, leader of the Opposition, starts asking questions about the proposed Aluminium Smelter, I scratch my head. There has been so much outcry in the past about it, whether  it be about the environment or the failure to provide jobs to residents in the area where the smelter itself is planned, enough so that it's likely that this was one of  the political failures of the People's National Movement (PNM) and the past leader of the PNM - Patrick Manning.

I've just witnessed T&T's first national political debate prior to an election, televised live on CNMG's C TV (find the recorded video here).  Here are my initial views.

NOTE: The T&T Elections & Boundaries Commission (EBC) did not publish detailed results by party by constituency via its website at the time I wrote this.  As a result, I had to rely on unverified figures from third-party websites that claimed to have obtained them from the EBC.  The 2007 results were preliminary figures released on 05 Nov 2007 and the 2010 results were preliminary figure

I started picking through the manifestos - both here and here. And when I started, I fully intended to complete a good fact check on each manifesto. To some degree, I have - and honestly, after a few days of staring at the 'contents' of each manifesto... I'm somewhat disgusted. So I stopped.

Disclaimer: To be clear, I will be expressing opinions on the People's Partnership manifesto as well. And since I am not voting in this General Election and have been irked by both sides, I am being as fair as possible.

Finally, with the People's Partnership Manifesto out, we can stand both manifestos side by side.

The People's Partnership Manifesto is available here (3 megabytes)- it was just released today.

The People's National Movement Manifesto is available here (20 megabytes). It was released earlier this week.

Dr Keith Rowley, the Hon. MP for Diego Martin West, finally spoke at the launch of his campaign in his constituency last Thursday night.  You can read about it here, and view the video here.