Max­ie Cuffie

"Boy, if we don't win this elec­tion, and I mean we here in the TOP case, there is no elec­tion we will win... I have a pre­dic­tion of 10-2 in the TOP's favour. Any­thing more is lagniappe but any­thing less will be dis­ap­point­ing."

UNC chair­man and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er.

One sus­pects that Jack Warn­er, as­tute po­lit­i­cal strate­gist that he is, is right about the for­mer even if he was so spec­tac­u­lar­ly wrong about the lat­ter. To put the re­sults of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion in per­spec­tive, the vote to re­pu­di­ate the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and its al­ly the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) was the largest-ever vot­er turnout in the his­to­ry of in­de­pen­dent T&T.

The on­ly times a larg­er per­cent­age of the elec­torate has turned out to vote were in the 1956 elec­tion that brought the PNM to pow­er, where the vot­er turnout was 82.15 of the elec­torate, and the fol­low­ing 1961 elec­tion, on the eve of In­de­pen­dence, where the turnout was 88.15.

Not even the elec­tion which brought the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion to pow­er in 1986 (65.45) or the PP's land­slide of May 24, 2010 (69.45), man­aged to at­tract the 70 per cent which vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to re­ject the TOP and its al­liance with the PP. The turnout in a THA elec­tion had on­ly once be­fore ever crossed 59 per cent and that was the 60 per cent in 2005.

But in­stead of fol­low­ing the wise coun­sel of Plan­ning and Mo­bil­i­sa­tion Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie, for all the par­ties of the PP to view the re­sult as a rea­son for in­tro­spec­tion and self-ex­am­i­na­tion, the Gov­ern­ment has pro­ceed­ed to in­sult a large per­cent­age of the T&T pop­u­la­tion for ex­er­cis­ing their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to vote for a par­ty of their choice.

Warn­er has said they need to be lift­ed from men­tal slav­ery, while Su­ruj Ram­bachan has said they vot­ed for cor­rup­tion and in­com­pe­tence. They have all agreed with the state­ment of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple that eth­nic fears could be the on­ly rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion for vot­ing against the PP.

The rea­son for the To­ba­go loss is easy for all to see and was ob­vi­ous to every­one apart from the PP hi­er­ar­chy and their strate­gists. Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal not­ed para­dox­i­cal­ly that the Trinidad PNM played no role in the To­ba­go vic­to­ry and that not one PNM MP ap­peared on a To­ba­go plat­form or was al­lowed to speak, save for its To­bag­on­ian po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

As I have not­ed here be­fore, To­ba­go pol­i­tics is dri­ven not by race but by na­tion­al­ism, and an Afro-Trinida­di­an lead­ing a cam­paign for a THA elec­tion would have been just as of­fen­sive to To­bag­o­ni­ans. It is why Patrick Man­ning al­ways kept a low pro­file in the THA elec­tions and why Row­ley, in two strate­gic moves that the PP nev­er un­der­stood, man­aged to out­wit Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the TOP cam­paign teams.

The first was to give the To­ba­go PNM the full au­ton­o­my in the par­ty that they were seek­ing. The amend­ment of Sun­day, De­cem­ber 2, to the par­ty's con­ven­tion in ef­fect put the To­ba­go PNM in a fed­er­al re­la­tion­ship with its Trinidad coun­ter­part. The leader of the To­ba­go PNM was no longer a deputy leader, but a leader in his own right, of the par­ty's To­ba­go arm.

In an elec­tion where the polls showed the most im­por­tant is­sue was in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment, it was an im­por­tant sig­nal to send. Con­verse­ly, the PP, with Ash­worth Jack hang­ing on to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's coat­tails, was head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

Jack, who, it was ex­posed, could not even build a house on his own with­out the help of UNC fi­nanciers, was boast­ing that he talked with the Prime Min­is­ter every day. While it was hard to find a pic­ture of Row­ley and Orville Lon­don to­geth­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Jack were like Siamese twins.

While Jack was off-lim­its to the PNM MPs, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was all over the air call­ing re­spect­ed el­der states­man Ho­choy Charles "a has-been" and hurl­ing all man­ner of in­nu­en­do at oth­er To­ba­go politi­cians.

And then there was the de­bate on the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill. Row­ley and the PNM took the po­si­tion that it was a mat­ter for the To­ba­go PNM, and no Trinidad PNM MP had the au­thor­i­ty to speak on it. As a To­bag­on­ian and the par­ty's leader, Row­ley alone spoke in the de­bate.

In­cred­i­bly, the PP led off the de­bate with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was fol­lowed by Dr Del­mon Bak­er and Anil Roberts, with the oth­er To­ba­go MP, Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin, nowhere to be seen. But that was on­ly part of the sto­ry. The re­al les­son of the elec­tion is just how out of touch the PP has be­come in just two and a half years.

It was not just Warn­er who nev­er saw the de­feat com­ing. At 8.30 on elec­tion night, long af­ter the polls were closed, TOP chair­man Li­onel Cok­er was on i95 pre­dict­ing a land­slide vic­to­ry, "And you take that to the bank", he told lis­ten­ers. The cam­paign had al­ready placed ad­ver­tise­ments thank­ing vot­ers for the "over­whelm­ing sup­port" and mu­sic trucks were lined up wait­ing for the fete.

Could a par­ty in pow­er be so out of touch with the elec­torate? Two and a half years ago the TOP gave its two To­ba­go seats to the UNC, as it had done be­fore in the na­tion­al elec­tions of 1995, to help it get in­to gov­ern­ment. It strains creduli­ty and is an in­sult to them to say they have sud­den­ly be­come racist. In as­sess­ing the re­sults, the PM sug­gest­ed To­ba­go had opt­ed to keep the old tried and test­ed rather than vot­ing for change.

She got it wrong. They vot­ed to re­ject the change the en­tire coun­try has been of­fered over the last two and a half years.

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.