Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims of Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and oth­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress that the post-elec­tion runoff could give third and fourth par­ties a foot in the door of gov­ern­ment and en­hance the pos­si­bil­i­ties for vi­brant coali­tion pol­i­tics is not sup­port­ed by the his­to­ry of coali­tion pol­i­tics in T&T and by po­lit­i­cal log­ic.

Mod­ern coali­tion/elec­toral pol­i­tics goes back to the 1976 poll, when the Unit­ed Labour Front emerged as an amal­gam of the left-lean­ing trade union move­ment and the rump of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty, the In­do-Trinidad po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy.In the 1986 elec­tion, the coali­tion Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion de­feat­ed for the first time in a gen­er­al elec­tion the pre­vi­ous­ly in­vin­ci­ble Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, 33-3.

The pre­de­ces­sor to the 1986 coali­tion was the 1981 Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion. Then there was the post-elec­tion coali­tion of 1995 when the To­ba­go NAR threw in its two To­ba­go seats with the UNC to give the par­ty the ma­jor­i­ty it need­ed to break the Trinidad 17-17 elec­toral tie.The present coali­tion of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship was cre­at­ed out of five po­lit­i­cal par­ties through the Fyz­abad De­c­la­ra­tion and won the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion hand­some­ly, de­feat­ing the PNM 29-12.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers