We should all be indebted to Selwyn Ryan for his column in last week's Sunday Express (October 12) entitled "The danger facing Trinidad and Tobago". Notwithstanding the title and the passing references to the country, what the article really delivers is a critical examination of the difficulties facing the PNM, and what it points to is the very real possibility that the grand old party is about to collapse onto itself.

The danger to the party and the difficulties it faces, according to Ryan, stem from the fact that "the Prime Minister seems locked on a path of self-destruction, and no one in his entourage seems willing or able to tell him that he needs to engage in course correction."

The real burden of the article is revealed with Ryan's revelation that "many stalwart members of the PNM believe and whisper their belief that the Prime Minister is out of control, and that he is repeating the peculiar behaviour that led to his downfall in 1995 when the PNM lost the elections.

Some gather informally to decide what must be done to avert political and national disaster. Their view is that the PNM is too important a national institution to be left to the PNM."

Ryan then goes on to list and discuss five options which are being considered when stalwart PNM members meet informally and whisper behind closed doors. These are, briefly, as follows: 1 - Rally behind Manning; 2 - Organise to remove Manning from Office; 3 - Build a counter-movement within the party to be ready to take control when Manning stumbles; 4 - Seek a grand coalition with forces outside the party; and 5 - Resign themselves to the fact that there are no options.

If the underlying assumption - that the Prime Minister by virtue of his attitude, his arrogance and his intransigence is leading the party to its destruction- is true and if the options for party members are truly limited to those outlined by Ryan, then we may already be witnessing the early phases of a grand implosion.

But which party is it that is about to implode? It is difficult to fathom that political people, especially those within the PNM, are still unmindful that there are in fact two PNM's. Patrick Manning has no such illusion. From the very moment that he gained possession, almost by default, of the leadership reins of the party he has worked assiduously and tirelessly to make the party his own - lock, stock and barrel.

The stalwarts, who now wring their hands in desperation, should ask themselves what did they do to keep the soul of the party alive in the post-1986 period when Manning drove Morris Marshall to an early grave and hounded Muriel Donawa-McDavidson, and other long-serving members out of the party.

Indeed it was Muriel, political to the core as she was, who at the time clearly saw the writing on the wall and warned the party that Manning was bent of converting the People's National Movement into Patrick's National Movement.

And we could ask where were these stalwarts prior to the general elections last year when Manning, in an unprecedented and utterly alien act for any leader of the PNM, called out the police to Balisier House to remove party supporters who were loudly protesting his treatment of Valley et al. But we won't ask because by then it was already too late. Manning had achieved his aim and he could have claimed then, what in effect he recently claimed, "le Parti c'est moi."

Those stalwarts who still consider themselves as bearing true faith and allegiance to the PNM founded by Dr Williams, and who today have awoken to find themselves little more than a minority tendency within an environment over which they have absolutely no control, should ask themselves, critically and honestly, how could it have happened? How could they have let this one man, far from being the best among them, gain such complete and total control of their party?

If they are prepared to speak truth to themselves they would have to admit that the original PNM carried within itself the seeds of its own subversion. These seeds came in the form of party principles or commandments enunciated early in the party's history and adhered to through all its years no matter how much its circumstances or its political environment changed.

The first of these was the principle of the paramountcy of the leader. This principle affirmed that, as Ryan puts it. "The role of the party in the PNM is to support the leader who is the standard bearer of the tribe ."

The second of these principles was that the party speaks with one voice.

Essentially this meant that once the leader had spoken no contrary views or opinion could be uttered in public, not simply by cabinet members or members of the Government but by anyone in the entire party, on pain of excommunication. The third principle was that the party stands alone. This principle asserted that the party would never enter into any alliances, coalitions, or joint undertakings with any other group or party in the country under any circumstances.

What these three principles effectively meant was that there could never be any open politics within the party, that any challenge to a sitting leader could only take place within the confines of party structures controlled by the leader and that any such challenge could never be made in the realm of ideas and policies but strictly on the issue of personality.

Adherence to these principles swiftly turned the party into one where politics degenerated into nothing but rumour-mongering and backbiting and secret cabals, where the leader was allowed to insult, demean and embarrass members at will with no possibility of sanction and where new policies and ideas died before they could even be conceived.

In such an environment all that was required to turn the party into the one man vehicle it has now become was the rise of a leader whose motivation had nothing to do with the good of the country or even of the party but solely with his own inward hunger for personal aggrandisement. Enter Patrick Manning.

So that the first thing these stalwart adherents to the party founded by Dr Williams should ask themselves as they contemplate their options, is which PNM are they hoping to save? Perhaps they would find that achieving clarity on that question may well open up many new vistas