Damn…you miss reading the paper for one day (Saturday) and you miss it all.
Sorry to be so late on this…Trinidad and Tobago will go to the polls on November 5, after Prime Minister Patrick Manning finally called elections on Friday, at the last sitting of the House of Representatives.
Now T&T politics is always entertaining. What I have always found interesting there is that unlike the old two-party system that has prevailed in other islands, in Trinidad, it has always been the PNM (founded by Trini father of Independence, Dr. Eric Williams) versus the latest up-and-comer. And just when you think one party has cemented itself as the ’second party’ (e.g UNC), some bacchanal does happen and a new set (or old come back as new) does throw dey hats in de ring. This election the real opposition seems to be the Congress of the People, a splinter party led by Winston Dookeran. Not surprisingly, they found they could not stand Basdeo Panday and went out on their own. Meanwhile, Bas, that old political animal, is still fighting for his place, even as he seems increasingly irrelevant and done for in Trinidad politics. His seat has been vacant since the whole conviction for corruption thing (though he can run for it again now that a new election has been called), his party has been led by Kamla Bissesar-Persaud for the last two years basically and even some of those left in the UNC don’t seem to want him to lead them into the next elections. But Bas is a wily creature so I wouldn’t count him out yet.
What really has me though is the state of the PNM. To everyone outside of TnT, they seemed like a lock to win another term, but lately it seems like they messing themselves up with this whole controversial ’screening process’ and the polls taken to assess whether sitting MPs are popular/fit enough to be the party’s candidates this time around.
Obviously, this has caused a whole lot of discomfort for the MPs who have felt like sitting ducks. Some like PNM deputy leader and Diego Martin Central MP Ken Valley have chosen to fight. Valley denounced the whole screening process as a sham.
Others, like San Fernando West MP Diane Seukeran seemingly decided to jump before they were pushed. Her withdrawal early last month leaves the precarious seat even more precariously poised for the UNC now.
What is puzzling to me and everyone else in the region, is why do this? Maybe Manning is a political whiz and he knows what he’s doing, but fomenting discord and discomfort within your own party a mere two months before the elections just does not seem smart. If he was so set on this polling and screening process to assess the strength of the candidates, why not do this much earlier to allow the bad feelings to subside a bit and the image of the party to recover?
It just seems baffling from where I stand at least. I mean, Trinidad is BOOMING. Oil and gas revenues have the country awash in money - new cars and new houses popping up everywhere, university tuition has now been made free and they have now even surpassed Barbados for per capita income. Not to mention that Trini businesses seemingly have money burning a whole in their pocket and are investing in, merging with or taking over companies around the region at will.
Rampant crime aside, Trinidadians are living sweet right now and Manning is presiding over it all. Furthmore, the opposition parties are still fractious and divided, with the UNC trying vainly to coax their breakaway flock in the COP ’back home’ and the COP stonily telling them to ‘talk to the hand’.
Hence Manning and the PNM should be a shoo-in to win the election, not discounting the recent bad run of election form by incumbent parties in Jamaica, St. Lucia, BVI and Bahamas. This move just seems self-destructive and masochistic. Is like he want to join Portia and Kenny and Perry ‘out in de cold’.
Unless it is that Manning is so very confident that his party can win anyway that he figures now is the time he can best afford to rock the boat and shape up the party into a lean, mean, election-winning machine.
Boy, I ent know. Truth be told, Trinidad does always confuse me. It’s like some kind of parallel universe where only Trinis can figure out what seems like chaos from the outside. Look at how they held three elections in two years between 2000-2002 and Trinis ‘ent dig nutten’. A former Prime Minister got convicted of corruption and thrown in jail (briefly) and Trinis ‘ent dig nutten’. The Chief Justice and Chief Magistrate subsequently got into a big imbroglio over the whole thing (I honestly still can’t figure out who is supposed to have done what but it’s been very entertaining- had media friends of mine from TnT calling me merrily telling me how they were staking out the Chief Justice in his house and thing). Once more, Trinis ent dig nutten.
So maybe this polling/screening mess is not as big a deal as it seems from the outside. In other places, such a show of no-confidence in your own team would be a big deal. People would cross the floor, there would be hand-wringing and agonising.
But not in Trinidad. Nutten can seemingly stop the bacchanal. I look forward to their elections.
