On April 8, 2010, Prime Minister Patrick Manning gave instructions to President George Maxwell Richards to dissolve Parliament, two years and seven months before the General Election is constitutionally due.
Manning gave no date. But the dissolution paves the way for the holding of a General Election within a minimum of 35 days and a maximum of 90 days. Sources said yesterday it would be definitely in May. The Election is normally held on a Monday and therefore the earliest date would be May 17, which sources said is highly probable.
Chairman of the People’s National Movement (PNM), Conrad Enill, when questioned on Thursday, suggested that reporters ask the Prime Minister about the date.
’That’s the Prime Minister’s call. The Prime Minister will decide at the appropriate time (when to give the date),’ he said, pointing that under the Constitution he (the PM) was empowered to make that determination.
Manning, however, was involved in the screening of candidates at Balisier House, Port of Spain. When approached just before he entered those sessions last evening, Manning would only say that the date would be announced in due course.
But the country remains completely mystified and baffled as to reasons for this premature return to the electorate, which had given the PNM a constitutional mandate in November 2007 to rule for five years.
Whatever reservations others within the hierarchy of the PNM had, Manning harboured no such doubts and moved inexorably along on this path since October last year.
And on the eve of a no-confidence motion in the Prime Minister, Manning dissolved the Parliament, leading Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who filed the no confidence motion, to the conclusion that the Prime Minister was afraid of revelations which could have been levelled under the protection of parliamentary privilege in the debate.
Manning abandoned the traditional modes used by the PNM for the general election announcement, which have in the past been made by the leader either in the Parliament or at a party convention. Manning’s action is historic in that his dissolution announcement did not contain a nomination or election.
The release from the Office of the Prime Minister’s office announcing the dissolution was terse.
“In accordance with Section 68 of the Constitution … Prime Minister Patrick Manning today advised his Excellency, President George Maxwell Richards, to dissolve the Parliament of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago with effect from midnight, Thursday April 8, 2010,” it reported.
The dissolution of Parliament also comes on the collapse of the Government’s efforts to pass into law the Trinidad and Tobago Revenue Authority Bill on Thursday evening. The Government needed the support of at least four Independent Senators to pass the bill, which required a special majority. But Government leader Enill conceded at the tea break that the Government only had the support of two of the Independents.
“We are still negotiating,” he said, as he joined Lenny Saith to talk with some of the Independents. However, by 8 pm, Government had moved a motion for the Senate to continue until the conclusion of Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira’s wind-up. It meant that the bill would die without being put to a vote, arguably an admission of failure by the Government that it was unable to get the requisite support for successful passage.
With the dissolution of Parliament, the House of Representatives ended with the no-confidence motion outstanding. But the General Election would no doubt broaden rather than curtail this debate. For while in the Parliament a debate on a no-confidence motion in the Prime Minister is limited to 41 MPs, who have only 75 minutes to present their case, an election campaign provides an opportunity for the entire country to debate in every nook and cranny, over at least a 35-day period whether the Patrick Manning-led PNM deserves a fresh mandate or not.
