Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Thou­sands will line up at polling sta­tions to­day to cast their votes for their choice. Will Barack Oba­ma be re-elect­ed or will his Re­pub­li­can op­po­nent, Mitt Rom­ney be­come the 45th Pres­i­dent?

The two have been fierce­ly cam­paign­ing es­pe­cial­ly in re­cent days as they hope to change the minds of the un­de­cid­ed vot­ers.

There were three de­bates in which both men out­lined the core of their poli­cies on ed­u­ca­tion, jobs, im­mi­gra­tion, en­er­gy and health­care. Af­ter a slug­gish start in the first de­bate, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma came back strong­ly and ac­cord­ing to pun­dits, held the edge in the last two de­bates.

But the first black US pres­i­dent is still fac­ing stiff com­pe­ti­tion. The lat­est poll sug­gest that Oba­ma was slight­ly ahead, with Rom­ney lead­ing in the "swing state" of Flori­da.

Last week Oba­ma was forced to put his cam­paign­ing on hold as he reached out to those ter­ri­bly af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Sandy on the east coast. He seems to be very con­fi­dent of his re-elec­tion even though some news net­works show a num­ber of Amer­i­cans who vot­ed for the Pres­i­dent in 2008, to be weary, four years lat­er, and un­sure about vot­ing him back in­to the White House.

He has been crit­i­cised for not do­ing enough in the last four years.

Many be­lieve the un­em­ploy­ment rate in the US is still too high. But al­so in his de­fense oth­ers say the dam­age done by the George W Bush Ad­min­is­tra­tion will take Amer­i­ca more than four years to re­cov­er.

So what does it mean for the rest of the world-main­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, for Oba­ma to be re-elect­ed or Rom­ney to re-in­state the poli­cies of a Re­pub­li­can Gov­ern­ment?

Lit­tle has been seen or heard through­out both can­di­dates' cam­paign­ing to court the Caribbean-Amer­i­can vote. There has not been much dis­cus­sion on the re­gion ei­ther-with the ex­cep­tion of Cu­ba and Venezuela. So what does this mean for Trinidad and To­ba­go and our re­la­tion­ship with the US? The Guardian spoke with a few key in­di­vid­u­als who have been close­ly fol­low­ing the is­sues in the US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign.

Paula Gopee-Scoon

For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter and op­po­si­tion MP for Point Fortin, Paula Gopee-Scoon, said it was ex­pect­ed that the for­eign pol­i­cy fo­cus would be on the is­sues in the Mid­dle East. How­ev­er, she does not feel the Caribbean should be wor­ried as the re­gion was not most­ly dis­cussed dur­ing the cam­paign­ing or de­bates. "The his­to­ry and re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the US have been a long-stand­ing and very cor­dial one. We con­tin­ue to work close­ly in the ar­eas of se­cu­ri­ty and sur­veil­lance where drug traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing and these kinds of things are con­cerned," she said. She added the US al­so re­mains the coun­try's largest and num­ber one trad­ing part­ner both for im­ports and ex­ports. "I'm hop­ing the in­ter­est con­tin­ues re­gard­less who be­comes the Pres­i­dent," said Gopee-Scoon.

Mark Wil­son

Over­seas jour­nal­ist Mark Wil­son, said Caribbean af­fairs (with ex­cep­tion of Cu­ba) are some­where very close to ze­ro on the US elec­tion-me­ter. He said Caribbean mi­grants most­ly live in states which are safe­ly De­mo­c­rat strong-holds, like New York, there­fore how they vote makes lit­tle dif­fer­ence. "The ex­cep­tion re­al­ly is Flori­da, which is a swing state ... but the an­glo­phone Caribbean vote is mas­sive­ly swamped by the His­pan­ics, in­clud­ing nat­u­ral­ly, the Cubans," Wil­son said. "I don't think the an­glo­phone Caribbean is much of a pri­or­i­ty for US for­eign pol­i­cy. Nat­u­ral­ly they want sta­bil­i­ty, but the main threat there is seen as Haiti, and pos­si­bly Cu­ba. They are mild­ly con­cerned about drug flow, mon­ey laun­der­ing etc and of course ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing, though frankly that is not much of an is­sue in the Caribbean," he added.

Wil­son said if Oba­ma re­turns peo­ple will see more of the same which he does not be­lieve is very much.

"Con­tin­u­ing the mild­ly help­ful Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive. Not much else" he reck­oned. How­ev­er a Rom­ney pres­i­den­cy would be mas­sive­ly dif­fer­ent as far as Caribbean pol­i­cy goes, Wil­son says. "The Huge im­pact on the re­gion is whether the post-elec­tion cli­mate is any dif­fer­ent for man­age­ment of the US econ­o­my. There is a "fis­cal cliff" com­ing up in the weeks af­ter the elec­tion, while Oba­ma is still in of­fice-even if he los­es the vote. If bud­get is­sues be­tween (ei­ther) pres­i­dent and Con­gress find a sen­si­ble res­o­lu­tion in com­ing months, we will see con­tin­u­ing stag­na­tion in US -but if they squab­ble un­con­trol­lably we risk fis­cal chaos and eco­nom­ic trou­bles, which bode ill for the Caribbean-most im­me­di­ate­ly the tourist economies, but al­so the rest of the re­gion," Wil­son con­clud­ed.

Dr Neil Parsan

Dr Neil Parsan, Trinidad and To­ba­go's am­bas­sador to the US and Mex­i­co, told the T&T Guardian re­gard­less of who se­cures the pres­i­den­cy, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States is ex­pect­ed to be one of con­tin­ued strength, longevi­ty and cor­dial­i­ty. He said it is ex­pect­ed that both coun­tries will con­tin­ue to en­gage their part­ners in es­tab­lished ar­eas of co­op­er­a­tion such as an en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty as well as to con­tin­ue to ho­n­our their com­mit­ments and agree­ments in­clud­ing agree­ments in dou­ble tax­a­tion, air ser­vices, bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ments, mar­itime co­op­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and open skies. "Both coun­tries should look for­ward to op­er­a­tional­is­ing sev­er­al US Caribbean ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing ex­pand­ing aca­d­e­m­ic ex­changes through the 100,000 strong ini­tia­tive, the In­ter­na­tion­al Di­as­po­ra En­gage­ment Al­liance and giv­ing fur­ther trac­tion from the Women's Lead­ers Col­lo­qui­um led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar," said Parsan.