Max­ie Cuffie

Just as she did on Thurs­day May 6, 2010, in the run-up to the May 24, 2010 elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­com­pa­nied by To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple leader Ash­worth Jack, last Wednes­day jour­neyed to the home of for­mer prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent, Arthur NR Robin­son.

The os­ten­si­ble pur­pose of the vis­it was to per­son­al­ly de­liv­er to the To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal icon the THA bills sched­uled for de­bate that very day. But in ef­fect what they were re­al­ly seek­ing was an en­dorse­ment for to­mor­row's THA elec­tion. There was none to be had.

Two and a half years ago the po­lit­i­cal cou­ple, scent­ing vic­to­ry, were treat­ed to lunch with Mr Robin­son, po­lit­i­cal ad­vice and a time­ly pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty that would have gone some way in gal­va­niz­ing sup­port for the PP in To­ba­go and among Trinida­di­ans for whom Mr Robin­son still holds a spe­cial place.

The News­day news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­alised ap­prov­ing­ly that "the re­al pow­er of the en­counter lies in the pho­to­graph of Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­most lean­ing on­to Robin­son as shown on the front page of Fri­day's News­day un­der the wit­ty head­line of "Rob­bie sup­ports UNC leader."

Last week with the TOP's cam­paign in To­ba­go on the line, there was no lunch, no ad­vice and no pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty. It was not even clear that the duo, who had to con­tent them­selves with a me­dia con­fer­ence us­ing Mr Robin­son's closed front door as a back­drop, even had a chance to meet the for­mer pres­i­dent.

Me­dia re­ports sug­gest­ed that the vis­it on­ly last­ed "a few min­utes" and that the Prime Min­is­ter, ques­tioned on Robin­son's take on the leg­is­la­tion, could on­ly state, ac­cord­ing to the Ex­press re­port:

"I'm as­sured that the bills will be read to him," she said, adding that she was sure Robin­son would be very hap­py as he con­tin­ues his life's jour­ney."

It would have been sur­pris­ing that, af­ter fa­mous­ly deny­ing a man­date to Bas­deo Pan­day on the grounds of the ab­sence of "moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues," Robin­son would have been com­fort­able ig­nor­ing the re­al con­cerns that have arisen over the con­struc­tion of a house for Jack by a well-known UNC fi­nancier, who per­formed a sim­i­lar role for the Prime Min­is­ter un­der still un­known terms and con­di­tions.

And that is even be­fore one con­sid­ers the tim­ing of the THA bills and the de­bate over whether they tru­ly rep­re­sent the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

The for­mer DAC and NAR leader knows a lot about po­lit­i­cal dis­ap­point­ments af­ter see­ing a still un­ri­valled 33 to three elec­toral man­date, re­duced to two seats at the end of his soli­tary term as prime min­is­ter.

At mid-term Per­sad-Bisses­sar's fall from po­lit­i­cal grace is now ap­proach­ing Robin­son­ian pro­por­tions, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est opin­ion polls. Al­though her po­lit­i­cal base, which ac­cord­ing to the MFO poll now com­pris­es "among those re­spon­dents who are 55-64 years, from a low so­cioe­co­nom­ic back­ground, of East In­di­an de­scent and those liv­ing in cen­tral and south Trinidad..." should pro­tect her from the ul­ti­mate rout­ing at the polls ex­pe­ri­enced by Robin­son's NAR.

It is clear that Robin­son, who, more than most, knows how to read the mood of the peo­ple and ever the shrewd politi­cian, is very con­scious of the po­lit­i­cal tem­per­a­ture in Trinidad and cer­tain­ly in To­ba­go. One does not need to take a poll to see where this is head­ing.

Al­though the MFO poll had suf­fi­cient method­olog­i­cal is­sues for the Gov­ern­ment to poke holes in­to it, I give the Prime Min­is­ter cred­it for ig­nor­ing these and recog­nis­ing that the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion now has a se­ri­ous chal­lenge con­fronting it, in that it has lost the trust and con­fi­dence of the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple in T&T.

The poll sig­nif­i­cant­ly over­stat­ed the Afro-Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion at 43 per cent (in­stead of 37.5) and un­der­stat­ed the In­do-Trinida­di­an one at 38 per cent (in­stead of 40 per cent) and there was no in­di­ca­tion that the re­sults were weight­ed to cor­rect for the sta­tis­ti­cal mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It was al­so un­clear whether the re­spon­dents of the re­gion­al di­vi­sions of the sam­ple were con­sis­tent with the pop­u­la­tion de­mo­graph­ics.

Most bizarrely, how­ev­er, af­ter find­ing that the PM's ap­proval rat­ing had fall­en from 54 to 38 per cent in one year and that her dis­ap­proval rat­ing had risen from 39 to 53 per cent, there was a coun­ter­fac­tu­al con­clu­sion, not backed up by any da­ta that, if an elec­tion were held to­day, the PP would emerge vic­to­ri­ous. So it would have been easy for the PM to dis­miss the find­ings, as she said in the me­dia re­lease last Mon­day.

"We can choose to shrug it off as im­per­fect or to use it as a wake-up call to do more," she not­ed, opt­ing to take the lat­ter course. Clear­ly she has no in­ten­tion of tak­ing the bas­ket to call elec­tions at mid-term, es­pe­cial­ly since she is quite aware that to­mor­row's THA poll re­sults will pro­duce re­al da­ta on just how far the TOP, the To­ba­go arm of the PP, has fall­en in the eyes of To­bag­o­ni­ans, and just how far her ad­min­is­tra­tion's mag­ic has dis­ap­peared.

Which is why, un­usu­al for a Trinida­di­an po­lit­i­cal leader, the PM has been spend­ing the last week be­fore the poll fre­net­i­cal­ly cam­paign­ing in To­ba­go. A recog­ni­tion that she has as much to lose as Ash­worth Jack, in an elec­tion that, for all their at­tempts to fo­cus on To­ba­go's in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment and the per­for­mance of the Orville Lon­don ad­min­is­tra­tion, all of Trinidad sees as a ref­er­en­dum on the PP.

For the PM and Jack the end re­sult could very well be a plague on both their hous­es.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.