BY PETER WICKHAM

MANY BARBADIANS might have missed the savage attack on the credibility of University of the West Indies Emeritus Professor Selwyn Ryan that came from Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister Patrick Manning last week.

Manning was apparently upset about the most recent poll released by Ryan, which essentially said that Manning and Panday were "locked in a race to the bottom".

For those familiar with political discourse, the potency of Manning's attack on Ryan is sufficient to authenticate his assessment. In this business one normally finds that the most acid attacks are reserved for instances in which the pollster is "spot on", hence Ryan should accept his abuse, safe in the knowledge that if he never got one right before (as Manning has suggested) he certainly has it right now.

Ryan has never sought my support on this matter; nor have I had recent conversations with him; however, I see him as somewhat of a "kindred spirit" and therefore "feel his pain". My intervention is not completely selfless, however, since I have had some experience in the Trinidad and Tobago political market, and I am therefore anxious to comment on this peculiar political environment.

It is a place where an honest pollster often appears less credible than a "snake oil salesman" who assumes that Trinidadians will never change and therefore makes an educated guess at the likely outcome of political contests. This peculiarity emerges largely on account of the race factor that dominates their politics and makes that place (along with Guyana) different from every other Caribbean territory.

Ryan has frequently commented in academic circles about the extent to which race complicates the work of a pollster, and having polled in both Trinidad and Guyana I am anxious to comment on the nature of this complexity. In most Caribbean islands where 45 per cent of people polled expressed the desire for change, there was a change of government. However, in both Guyana and Trinidad, CADRES recorded a desire for change in the vicinity of 70 per cent in pre-election polls and in neither instance was there a change of government.

I have also detected a tendency on the part of Guyanese and Trinidadians to speak openly and freely about their political intentions which reflect their mental state and contradict their racial profile, but they later revert to their traditional behaviour at the last minute.

This complicates the work of a pollster considerably since the vast majority of us move into the field "on instruction" and often have little control over the frequency and intensity of our polls. It is therefore not surprising that a CADRES poll which predicted a ULP victory in St Vincent and the Grenadines in 2000 was still relevant to the outcome twelve months later. In Trinidad, however, a single political event (UNC Mid Centre Meeting) changed the course of an entire election and deemed all polls done by CADRES, SARA and McAl irrelevant to the election that followed.

This brings the most recent Ryan poll into focus since the desperate political picture it paints is obvious to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about Trinidad politics. People there generally have little use for the government, opposition and the individuals who currently lead both entities.

If, however, an election were called tomorrow Manning would win comfortably and similarly, Panday can reasonably expect to triumph over both Bissessar and Maharaj in the UNC's internal election and lead the Opposition as long as he continues to "live, move and have [his] being".

Like Ryan, I am convinced that any reasonable poll there would conclude that people are on the verge of change and consider personalities like Dookeran, Bissessar and Rowley infinitely more capable than the present leadership of both the government and opposition.

Notwithstanding data, intuitive logic and considerable political training, we both know that if an election were called tomorrow none of these individuals would emerge as leaders since Trinidad is a place where political opinion is often unrelated to political action.