I no­tice that in the news­pa­pers, UNC Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is say­ing that the UNC is con­fi­dent that the peo­ple will vote along par­ty lines, ob­vi­ous­ly in ref­er­ence to the up­com­ing Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion.I find Dr Mooni­lal's state­ment to be in­sult­ing to the elec­torate. Dr Mooni­lal is say­ing that in his view the elec­torate is so un­in­tel­li­gent that they will blind­ly ac­cept the line of the par­ty to which base they be­long, and have no feel­ings, emo­tion or opin­ion on any sub­ject mat­ter.

That kind of at­ti­tude from politi­cians has to be re­ject­ed. The elec­torate is not a herd of dumb sheep who do not–or worse, can­no–make in­tel­li­gent opin­ions and de­ci­sions.Dr Mooni­lal is wrong to as­sume that peo­ple will just ac­cept non­sense the politi­cians do and there­fore the politi­cians can do what­ev­er they want to the peo­ple and the peo­ple will ac­cept it just be­cause it is the holy de­cree of the po­lit­i­cal leader or par­ty pow­er bro­kers.

Dr Mooni­lal seems to have for­got­ten that it was just in 2010 that the rise to pow­er of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was premised sole­ly on the re­jec­tion of the old po­lit­i­cal par­a­digms by the pop­u­la­tion. The max­i­mum-leader, de­mi-God syn­drome was bro­ken when the UNC and PNM faith­ful sent Bas­deo Pan­day and Patrick Man­ning pack­ing four months apart. The pop­u­la­tion is mov­ing for­ward, not back­wards.If Dr Mooni­lal tru­ly be­lieves in what he has said then his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer is clos­er to the end than we would have pre­vi­ous­ly as­sumed.

Clau­dia Ali

Ch­agua­nas