There are times nowadays in the current political comess when I feel very much like Alice In Wonderland.
The television being the chief source of 'curiouser and curiouser', such as, last Monday night when the news showed Basdeo Panday, the Member of Parliament for Couva North, casually attired in white shirt jack, receiving the formally attired Caricom delegation at the Prime Minister's residence. An ordinary M.P. living in fine style at taxpayers expense while the Honourable Prime Minister continues to allow him a period of adjustment nearly two months after the December elections and five weeks after his removal from the position of Prime Minister of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
And like a flash of lighting it was clear that maybe Mr Panday has no intention of moving as this might be his way of sharing power - he in the residence and the Prime Minister in the Whitehall offices. But as the caller to a television programme so correctly said "living in the residence does not make Mr Panday Prime Minister." And when the history of Trinidad and Tobago is written for this period, it will always show that our Honourable Prime Minister was Mr Patrick Augustus Manning, who must be admired for his patience with his predecessor. Checks dating back to 1981 have shown that Erica Williams, on the sudden death of her beloved father Dr Eric Williams, sorted and cleared up her father's business within a short space of time and was out of the residence as quickly as possible although fully aware that her father's successor, the late George Chambers, would have given her all the time she needed.
And thereafter each outgoing Prime Minister did the honourable thing and moved from La Fantasie Road within a respectable time frame. In 1986 when Mr Chambers lost the elections, the Chambers vacated the Prime Minister's residence seven days after the elections. Mr Chambers moved even faster from the Prime Minister's office as he left there the day after the election results were known.
In 1991 when Mr A.N.R. Robinson and the National Alliance for Reconstruction lost the elections, the Robinsons' friends rallied around them and moved them out of the residence in less than a week. "We quickly packed things in boxes, another one of us organised transport and helped to move them to Ellerslie Park in a matter of days" says Anthony Smart.
In 1995 when the current permutation was reversed and Mr Manning had to give way to Mr Panday, at the end of one and a half weeks when the NAR had helped to shift the balance of power in the United National Congress' favour and President Noor Hassanali appointed Mr Panday as Prime Minister, the Mannings left the Prime Minister's residence in less than a week. The total time after the elections while awaiting the President's decision amounted to two weeks. Can you imagine what would have happened if the Mannings had taken two months before the Pandays were allowed to take up residence for whatever reasons. Would Mr Panday have been as generous as Prime Minister Manning has been in the present circumstances.
It is time that the Pandays moved out of the Prime Minister's residence. This attitude of 'nah leaving' is both scandalous and without precedence. The taxpayers are supporting the residence for whoever may be the Prime Minister of their country and it is now long past the time that The Mannings should be in residence at La Fantasie Road and the Pandays, to quote Mr Panday himself, "north, south, east or west, wherever, as long as I am in Trinidad and Tobago."