However, the fact that some mice are not timid does not in any way detract from the comparison of homo sapiens with musculus. The Trinidad equivalent, last heard from Patrick Manning, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago is, “We will see who is man and who is manicou-man!”

I assume that we all have a general idea of what a “man” is although sometimes we expect too much, but not many people outside of Trinidad seem to know what a “manicou” is and, worse, what constitutes a “manicou-man”. The word “manicou” means “opossum”. The word “opossum” comes from the Native American word for “white dog”. However, Mr. Manning’s reference to “manicou-man” had nothing to do with race or colour. A “manicou-man” is someone who is timid, plays “possum” or dead when confronted with problems, and generally does not assert himself in any way.

Is there any insult worse than the accusation that you are a manicou-man? Recently, one has emerged. It is the word “manning”. What does it mean in the context of Trinidad dialect? A “manning” is someone who having called an early election in 1995 and lost, does the same thing again in 2010. A “manning” is someone who claims that in 2009 he set the date for an election due in 2012 as May 24, 2010 and despite the drop in his popularity, the meteoric rise of an Opposition Leader and the formation of a coalition, refused to change that date.

A “manning” is someone who claims to know history because he “sat at the feet” of historian Dr. Eric Williams but who is not so much condemned as content to repeat it. A “manning” is someone who is utterly convinced that he will win an election which he loses by, if not a landslide, a mini-avalanche. Eventually, the term “manning” will come to mean anyone with bad timing, however right now it is associated with being unreasonable, unduly stubborn, not willing to listen to other people, vindictive, dictatorial and loyal, not to a fault but to many, many faults.

There is even a new disease in town, “manningitis”, the symptoms of which are a swollen head, a tendency to hallucinate and a Hart problem. For those of you who believe that “Hart” is a typo, it is not. “Hart” in this context refers to a particular phase in recent Trinidad history where one person, Calder Hart, was the Chairman of five State companies.

A Commission of Enquiry into one of those companies has recommended that Mr. Hart be investigated for several possible breaches of the law.

I was told that the election date of May 24, 2010, arose from a vision that either Mr. Manning had or that was revealed to him by his Prophetess and Spiritual Advisor, the Rev. Juliana Pena. If this is true, Mr. Manning seemed to have forgotten the Shakespeare “set book” which we all studied for the Senior Cambridge examinations during our days together at Presentation College, San Fernando, Trinidad.

The book is about Macbeth whose vaulting ambition and tendency to dress in borrowed robes made him something of an acrobatic transvestite, bewitched, bothered and bewildered. He became both complacent and arrogant- a kind of divine right of kings and other despots that makes them feel invulnerable.

Mr. Manning may wish to recalibrate his instruments.

Mr. Manning came up with the same rhetoric in 2010 that his party, the People’s National Movement (PNM) used in 1986 when they were also by a rampaging coalition that for some reason they chose to underestimate. They called it a “Marriage of Convenience”.

Basdeo Panday, one of the leaders of the coalition, when asked whether the coalition was indeed a “marriage of convenience” quipped, “Isn’t every marriage?” The Opposition used the slogan, “One Love” and Ronald Williams, a PNM Minister and campaign manager for that election, famous like Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, for his colorful vocabulary, said to me, “Tony, you know why they call it ‘One Love’? It is because they all trying to (expletive deleted) one another.”

As it is, the fallout has already started and it seems that the PNM is guilty of the same sin of aggressive cohabitation that Mr. Williams accused the “One Love” crowd of committing. Before the election, Mr. Manning’s chief critic within his own party, Dr. Keith Rowley, alluded to a time for “court martial” after the election.

Mr. Manning has now announced his intention to give up the political leadership and his former colleagues are already distancing themselves from him. The Chairman of the PNM, Conrad Enill, handpicked by Manning for a Ministerial and Senate position, has been quoted as saying, “I think this particular election basically revolves around one man, and what you see today is a reflection of that rather than a reflection of the party.

That’s reality.” While manicous are not noted for any maritime misdeeds, mice when they become rats are famous for deserting sinking ships. Clearly, when the election date was revealed to him last year, Mr. Manning should have smelt a rat or two.

*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that Manning, like Macbeth, when faced with the Black Power leader of the 1970 uprising, the former Geddes Granger, should have asked, “Is this a Daaga that I see before me?”