How can you explain the bully-boy politics of Trinidad? Something in the water?

A friend of mine, a London-based Trinidadian, is trying to understand the irrational judgements that seem to have overtaken politicians on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. He believes the answer must lie in the water that MPs are served in parliament. He may be right.

Only last week I informed readers that Basdeo Panday, leader of Trinidad's opposition, had refused bail after he was remanded on a charge of receiving a bribe. Panday is severely diabetic and underwent a heart bypass operation a couple of years ago.

His self-imprisonment triggered off explosive social divisions. To calm passions, members of the islands' inter-religious organisation visited Panday in prison and impressed upon him how dangerous the situation had become. He accepted their advice and took bail. Passions have since cooled.

Days after his release, Panday attended a sitting in parliament where the prime minister, Patrick Manning, baited him between sips from a glass of water. "You now know that jail is not nice," he said. And he invited the leader of the opposition to warn MPs to behave themselves, because otherwise prison awaited them.

There was more to come. Manning announced, apropos of nothing, that he was about to resume hanging. He then had the death warrant read to a prisoner on death row. There is absolutely not a sliver of legality to this order. The Privy Council in London had some time ago ordered the government of Trinidad and Tobago to replace execution with imprisonment. Manning ignored the law, tarried awhile, and then out of the blue announced that he was clearing death row by executing 86 prisoners. Madness. The local high court saved the day on 13 June by ordering a stay of execution.

But how did Manning reach the conclusion that he could intervene in the law without legislation, and without a commanding majority in parliament? Something in the water? Somehow I think not. The prime minister's behaviour was just utterly bizarre, the stuff of freak shows.

Manning is fully aware that he could not possibly resume hanging in the face of the Privy Council's decision. He needs a two-thirds majority in parliament to transfer power from London to a half-formed Caribbean Court of Justice (a court of appeal), which might ensure that scores of men and women swing from the executioner's rope. And so he hopes to force the opposition to vote with the government - in this way and by

such foul means does he plan to achieve the majority he requires.

If the opposition refuses to join the government, Manning will propagandise that the opposition is responsible for the 160 murders so far this year, even though all of them have been committed on his own watch. A sure election winner, he thinks.

I cannot support my friend's water theory, but how else can one explain such ridiculously brutal governance?

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