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Has Basdeo Panday made a decision to stay on? The question arises from his insistence this week to UNC supporters that because of Prime Minister Patrick Manning's recent walkabouts a General Election was near, "whether it is the next three years or three months." The time had come he said, to "once again demonstrate good governance." Can we take this as a hint that he was not about to step down as the Party's Political Leader? His statement as to "whether it is the next three years or three months" could only have been designed for effect as the country's next General Election is constitutionally due to be held in 2007 anyway. Did Panday seriously expect his listeners, specifically, and other United National Congress members and supporters, generally, to regard a General Election in 2007 as an early election?

Panday, who is Political Leader of the United National Congress, could not understand why the Prime Minister would go on walkabouts after "just two years" in Office, without this being an indication that he was planning an early election, even, and this is clearly absurd, if this meant holding it in the year when it is constitutionally due. But no one needed to have a crystal ball to realise that Manning, who had opted not to attend a Heads of Government Meeting in favour of having his initial walkabout in Beverly Hills, Canada, may have done this to placate the Jamaat al Muslimeen, when a mosque built by a contractor for a Government housing project in the area was reportedly earmarked for demolition. The mosque had been constructed without prior plan approval. Additional walkabouts, one of which took place in a UNC constituency, have now apparently been suspended.

The Opposition Leader, who had once indicated that he would have retired from politics, when he reached age 70, adjusting this to stepping down at the next UNC Convention should the Party wish it, now appears to have reconsidered his position. Panday's "the time has come to rescue the country and once again promote good governance" was as clear as the proverbial pikestaff that he was not ready to demit Party office. With Trinidad and Tobago's present rate of economic growth the quiet envy of many a developed nation, and in addition buoyed by established huge reserves both of natural gas and crude, which should continue almost indefinitely save for an unforeseen upheaval in the economies of major nations, there is no visible need for Manning to call an early General Election. The only conspicuously early General Elections called in the 42-year history of Independent Trinidad and Tobago - in 1995 by Manning and 2001 by Panday - resulted in a loss of Government by both. Manning is not likely to repeat the disaster of 1995 when his election call more than a year before it was due constitutionally saw the People's National Movement out of power for only the second time in 39 years.

The PNM was replaced by the United National Congress in (1995 and only returned to Office, when then Prime Minister Panday,) fearing that his Government would have lost a crucial vote through disaffection following on charges by one his senior Cabinet Ministers of State corruption, called a snap election. Interestingly, while Manning called the election with more than a year of his term still to run, Panday's decision to return to the polls was taken with the Party in office for less than a year of its second term. Meanwhile, Panday's publicly stated belief of a General Election three years before it must be called, is a repeat of a not dissimilar view of one of the country's then Opposition Party leaders, Bhadase Sagan Maraj, expressed at a public meeting in 1963 that the PNM Government would have called a snap election. It is history that then Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams, called the election in 1966, the year it was due, and went on to win it.