Trinidad PM warned by analyst to watch his back after Guyana gov’t collapse

(Trinidad Guardian) If De­vant Ma­haraj’s claim that he is get­ting priv­i­leged in­for­ma­tion from some­one in­side Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Cab­i­net is cor­rect, then Row­ley needs to en­sure that any dis­con­tent is ad­dressed to avoid be­ing put in a sim­i­lar predica­ment to what tran­spired in the Guyana Par­lia­ment on Fri­day night.

This was the state­ment made by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James yes­ter­day.

His com­ment came af­ter Guyana gov­ern­ment back­bencher Char­ran­das Per­saud vot­ed in favour of a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence, giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion a win against the Gov­ern­ment and paving the way for fresh elec­tion in three months.

James said Per­saud had “dis­turbed the ap­ple cart.”

How­ev­er, he said this should act as a warn­ing to Row­ley.

“He (De­vant Ma­haraj) has claimed more than once that peo­ple with­in Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion have giv­en him sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion which he then has been us­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly for his own pur­pose,” James said.

James said this was seen in the re­lease of cell­phone num­bers for min­is­ters by Ma­haraj.

“That speaks to a cer­tain lev­el of dis­con­tent if he is cor­rect and the ques­tion is where that dis­con­tent can lead if the right mo­ti­va­tions are there,” he said.

“If he (Ma­haraj) is cor­rect then that means there is some dis­con­tent. Can that dis­con­tent spill over in­to a shift of sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment to the Op­po­si­tion in the events of a vote of no con­fi­dence?” James ques­tioned.

“They can do it even as we speak even with­out a vote of no con­fi­dence, sim­ply a deep dis­af­fec­tion reach­ing burst­ing point and even­tu­al­ly peo­ple tak­ing ac­tion, I don’t know, I’m just say­ing it is pos­si­ble.”

James said the nar­row mar­gin of vic­to­ry be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion in Guyana paved the way for the sit­u­a­tion that hap­pened on Fri­day to oc­cur.

Cur­rent­ly, the make-up of the Low­er House stands at 29 seats for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and 12 for the Op­po­si­tion.