A poll be­ing con­duct­ed by the North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NAC­TA) to de­ter­mine sup­port for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion on the sec­ond an­niver­sary since it came in­to pow­er re­veals the in­ter­nal rum­blings among the rul­ing coali­tion part­ners is erod­ing con­fi­dence in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The poll al­so found it was erod­ing peo­ple's faith in the gov­ern­ment as well as hurt­ing pop­u­lar sup­port for it. But re­spon­dents ex­pect the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to last its full term in of­fice say­ing they don't think any of the part­ners want to lose the perks of of­fice by leav­ing the gov­ern­ment or tak­ing ac­tions to trig­ger its down­fall.

The poll, con­duct­ed by Vish­nu Bis­ram, in­ter­viewed 565 re­spon­dents re­flect­ing the de­mo­graph­ics of the pop­u­la­tion-39 per cent Afros, 43 per cent In­dos, 16 per cent mixed and two per cent oth­ers. The find­ings have a mar­gin of er­ror of 4 per cent. The find­ings al­so show peo­ple had high ex­pec­ta­tions of the gov­ern­ment when it came to of­fice two years ago but they com­plained the gov­ern­ment has not de­liv­ered on many promis­es.

They said the PP has not brought about the ex­pect­ed change of gov­er­nance which was promised dur­ing the cam­paign in May 2010. The poll said the dis­en­chant­ment with the gov­ern­ment stemmed from the con­tin­u­ous pub­lic in­fight­ing among the coali­tion part­ners pre­cip­i­tat­ing a per­cep­tion of in­sta­bil­i­ty.

Al­so, there is wide­spread dis­ap­point­ment among the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who com­plained that the econ­o­my was stag­nant blam­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter for not tak­ing ef­fec­tive mea­sures to stim­u­late growth. Peo­ple al­so said mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment were in­volved in too many un­forced er­rors and un­pro­voked mis­steps.

They note that the Prime Min­is­ter has been busy putting out "po­lit­i­cal bush fires" that are self in­flict­ed or ig­nit­ed by coali­tion part­ners. And many say there is a lev­el of ar­ro­gance among some Min­is­ters in dis­miss­ing com­plaints and so­cial move­ments.

On the pos­i­tive side, peo­ple praise the gov­ern­ment for its de­liv­ery on in­fra­struc­ture (bridges, roads, trans­port, avi­a­tion ex­pan­sion-ku­dos for for­mer CAL Chair George Nicholas), hous­ing, ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, Cepep, and so­cial wel­fare ben­e­fits. Cit­i­zens of all eth­nic groups be­lieve that they can get a pub­lic house al­though there are com­plaints about the bu­reau­crat­ic wait­ing pe­ri­od with not enough hous­es to meet the grow­ing de­mand.

An­oth­er pos­i­tive is the Prime Min­is­ter be­ing praised for man­ag­ing con­flicts with­in the gov­ern­ment un­like her pre­de­ces­sors. The PM still has a lot of good­will al­though most of her cab­i­net is dis­liked as be­ing too ar­ro­gant and un­re­spon­sive to com­plaints and her gov­ern­ment is ris­ing in un­pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers say her lead­er­ship style gives an as­sur­ance that the coali­tion will last its full term. Asked in light of bick­er­ing in the PP coali­tion, whether they thought the gov­ern­ment would last its full term, 46 per cent said yes with 37 per cent say­ing no.

In gen­er­al, peo­ple say they do not view the PNM as present­ly con­sti­tut­ed was a vi­able al­ter­na­tive. Asked if a gen­er­al elec­tion were held, which po­lit­i­cal par­ty would they would vote for, 39 per cent said PP, 30 per cent PNM, 16 per cent a new par­ty, 15 per cent don't know or un­de­cid­ed or won't vote.

The poll said there was a high de­gree of ap­a­thy among vot­ers with peo­ple los­ing faith in the abil­i­ty of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties to bring mean­ing­ful change to their lives. Many said all the par­ties have be­trayed them and would like suc­cess­ful mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to be­come in­volved in pol­i­tics to pro­vide bet­ter gov­er­nance and to trans­form the econ­o­my.