Metaphor­i­cal­ly a “Tro­jan horse” is a trick or strat­a­gem used to de­ceive an en­e­my. In its mod­ern form, a Tro­jan horse is mal­ware which is dis­guised as a le­git­i­mate soft­ware pro­gramme to avoid de­tec­tion.

The term orig­i­nates from the ruse used by the Greeks to cap­ture Troy af­ter a fruit­less siege of ten years. The Greeks con­struct­ed a huge wood­en horse, in which they con­cealed a se­lect force, while their ma­jor army pre­tend­ed to sail away. The Tro­jans pulled the horse in­to the city as a vic­to­ry tro­phy. At night whilst the Tro­jans slept, the Greek sol­diers ex­it­ed the horse and opened the city gates to the Greek army, which had re­turned in the night. The city was cap­tured and de­stroyed. Hence the term “be­ware of Greeks bear­ing gifts.”

The metaphor may be ap­pro­pri­ate to de­scribe the cur­rent lead­er­ship im­broglio that sim­mers be­neath the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. Apro­pos of noth­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in wind­ing up the re­cent Bud­get de­bate, seemed to sug­gest that his time in Par­lia­ment could soon come to an end. He had im­plied as much dur­ing the 2015 elec­tion cam­paign and again in 2020, in­di­cat­ing his will­ing­ness to pur­sue sheep farm­ing and oth­er fam­i­ly in­ter­ests. That did not hap­pen on ei­ther oc­ca­sion. What is dif­fer­ent now?

Dr Row­ley has been leader of the par­ty since May 26th, 2010 and Prime Min­is­ter since 2015. Much has changed since then.

Fos­ter Cum­mings, then a gen­er­al coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive, led the charge that re­sult­ed in Patrick Man­ning lit­er­al­ly be­ing chased out of Bal­isi­er House. Now, he oc­cu­pies a more pow­er­ful po­si­tion as par­ty gen­er­al sec­re­tary, a sit­ting mem­ber in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a min­is­ter in an in­flu­en­tial min­istry that pro­motes many youth pro­grammes.

Whilst there has been no polling da­ta for pub­lic scruti­ny, the talk on the ground shows there is no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in pol­i­cy ori­en­ta­tion be­tween the two ma­jor par­ties. Se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and the rule of law are the two pil­lars that up­hold any so­ci­ety. Yet, this ad­min­is­tra­tion seems un­able to or­ches­trate a co­her­ent set of poli­cies to ad­dress the coun­try’s crime rate and has sought to lim­it its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fund­ing the var­i­ous arms of gov­ern­ment.

Crime is a light­ning rod for pub­lic dis­af­fec­tion, which trans­lates in­to un­pop­u­lar­i­ty tar­get­ed at the po­lit­i­cal leader. An un­pop­u­lar leader re­duces the par­ty’s elec­tion prospects. To re­verse this trend, two things are re­quired. The first is to com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dress the crime prob­lem and the sec­ond is to iden­ti­fy suc­cess­es. That re­quires more time than the 10-12 months left be­fore the next gen­er­al elec­tion. One al­ter­na­tive is to de­ploy a mech­a­nism that will iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial ri­vals, fa­cil­i­tate counter-mea­sures and dis­tract the pub­lic.

Dr Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to “can­cel” the con­ven­tion and in­ter­nal elec­tions with­out the ap­proval of the Gen­er­al Coun­cil was a po­lit­i­cal mis­cal­cu­la­tion. Ar­ti­cle 17 (1) of the PNM con­sti­tu­tion al­lows on­ly the Gen­er­al Coun­cil to sum­mon or vary the date of the par­ty con­ven­tion. Ob­jec­tions were voiced, sug­gest­ing a deep di­vi­sion and dis­sen­sion with­in the par­ty. Chal­leng­ing the au­thor­i­ty of the Gen­er­al Coun­cil made mat­ters worse be­cause it cre­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for more con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

Stu­art Young’s state­ment af­ter last week­end’s PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing was de­lib­er­ate­ly vac­u­ous and mis­lead­ing in at­tempt­ing to cov­er the cracks. Un­like the orig­i­nal, how­ev­er, this Tro­jan horse will not bear fruit overnight.