PM PATRICK
MANNING

WINSTON
DOOKERAN ...
during one of
his walkabouts.

Election 2007, or whenever it is called, is heading for a repeat of the 1976 general election, when there was a proliferation of parties … and jokers who contested the polls.

Jokers galore lined up to be bobolees as the masses took turns in making fun of them.

It was licks for so for most of them.

Remember Ramdeo Sampath Metha, an attorney-at-law, who reportedly changed his clothes (read three-piece suit) three times during a Press conference called at the Hilton Hotel to announce his candidacy, reputed medical practitioner Dr. Ivan Perot and his LAP party, WINP of Ashford Sinanan fame, two DLPs with Vernon Jamadar and Alloy Lequay, ANC, Independents and a host of others who are now consigned to the rubbish heap of history.

They all received the cut-tail of their life.

Today, we have an ex-Industrial Court judge, Lloyd Elcock, a bright lawyer no doubt and an otherwise intelligent human being, a man with a dynamite other half, ganging up with some partner of his and calling a press conference to announce the formation of some party, whose name nobody can remember, to contest the next election.

Nicholas’ party is called MND?

This other joker from last election, Steve Alvarez, and his DPTT, also have plans of winning the next election, though no one knows who are the other members of the party.

Some man from the USA has also formed a party and there may be sundry others.

Then there is everybody’s bobolee: NAR.

Punch drunk NAR and leader Carson Charles keep dreaming that they can get up from their post-1986 slumber and beat everybody.

Remember the joke about the little boy whose Mom used to beat him and he said he wanted to go and live by NAR because they don’t beat anybody?

Add to that the two UNCs, just like the two DLPs of 1976, and you get the picture.

Those jokers will call a meeting, get an audience of two including one heckler and they will go on and on, believing up to 6 p.m. on polling day that they have a chance.

And that is even though they know that their own wife and children are not offering them any support.

During one election campaign, a candidate for one of the nuisance parties, who hardly held public meetings because no one came, made a serious promise to his wife: “Girl, when I win I will buy the piece of land where we are living.”

And she believed him!

The little money he spent on his campaign may well have been enough to purchase the land.

But politics and the smell of victory even when defeat is staring you in the face seem to be powerful lures for people with the tendency to control others.

Last Sunday, Warner, a usually stiff-waist fellow, who is now smelling political power, decided that the time had come to let down his hair … and wine

Remember, Warner is also one of UNC’s deputy political leader

Well, even Dhanraj Singh, (remember him), the original UNC winer man, would have blushed.

Somehow it seems like UNC people like to wine for the camera.

Stalin may well have to rewrite his song: If you see Jack wine/If you see how he was out of time/And the Phagwa crowd poked fun and tell him he doing fine.

Somebody recalled that one day when Dhanraj was still a minister, he was wining at a Chutney fete at the Rienzi Complex, hands on his waist and with his gun exposed.

Of course, he probably had in a few.

There he was wining and telling anybody who would listen: “Ah now understand how PNM used to feel when they was in power.”

Power! Poor Dookeran!

Somebody told him that walking and running in races will bring him into contact with the masses.

So Winston “Gypsy” Peters, it seemed, was the one who encouraged him to take part in the 10K Mayaro bpTT Walk/Run; Dookeran also entered one of the Clico Marathon races.

Huffing and puffing, he reportedly finished both races, hardly being recognised as he passed by.

He reminded some people of Mahal, the character who used to go all over Trinidad walking but playing he was driving.

Dookeran playing he walking but he really campaigning.

Indeed, Dookeran will give Johnny Walker serious competition if he continues at the rate he is going.

But, is Dookeran serious?

Politics turn a big, educated man into a walking joke!

And Patrick!

In 1995 it was firing by fax, it was the Hong Kong trip, it was a clairvoyant named Sterling Belgrove.

Some PNM people have also expressed concern about Benny Hinn’s coming visit in May, fearing that he will do a “reading” on Manning and cause him to do more stupidness.

Why would Manning want a Coat of Arms on his car, some of his own supporters are asking.

What’s the importance of those little insignificant things?

Or are those little things really important to Manning?

So really, why would Patrick need this little piece of silver?

Is it a case of politics making a big man look for new toys to play with because his marbles are not enough?

A young girl once explained to me why she was unfaithful to her boyfriend: “While I was upstairs waiting on him, he was downstairs shinning his tyres with Amoral and otherwise admiring and playing with his car.”

This thing they call politics!