Mar­tin George

For this elec­tion sea­son, we have seen many right steps and a whole lot more mis-steps. For this week's col­umn, and with no par­tic­u­lar se­quen­tial or mer­it or­der as re­gards the po­lit­i­cal par­ties, I have list­ed some of the right steps and mis-steps as ob­served over the past few weeks. Read­ers are in­vit­ed to send me their com­ments on any oth­er right steps and mis-steps which they feel should be in­clud­ed on this list.

RIGHT STEPS

1. Say­ing that the prop­er­ty tax will not be im­ple­ment­ed. This is one of the most fun­da­men­tal is­sues in this elec­tion, as the prop­er­ty tax is one which so many peo­ple are har­bour­ing a fear of, whether jus­ti­fi­ably so or not, but the per­cep­tion at the end of the day is that it is like­ly to be dra­con­ian, so any­one who says it will not be im­ple­ment­ed will win votes.

2. Bring­ing back Row­ley on board as one of your front­line speak­ers.

3. Hav­ing a coali­tion part­ner­ship which has good PR ap­peal across racial lines, gen­der lines, spans labour and busi­ness in­ter­ests, and takes in­to ac­count the in­ter­ests of To­ba­go.

4. Kam­la's of­fer­ing to take a pay cut for her­self and her min­is­ters, if elect­ed.

5. Mak­ing a clean break with the Pan­day/Ramesh fac­tion.

6. Har­ness­ing the ef­fect of "woman pow­er."

7. Kiss­ing the UNC man­i­festo in re­sponse to the tear­ing up of yours.

8. Con­stant­ly re­fer­ring to and por­tray­ing Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a "charm­ing la­dy."

9. In­di­ca­tions by Kam­la that she will not oc­cu­py the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence if elect­ed.

10. Sud­den­ly ac­quir­ing new ve­hi­cles and equip­ment for Fire Ser­vice, Po­lice Ser­vice, Army and Coast Guard (ap­par­ent­ly, these things still have the abil­i­ty to sway vot­ers, notwith­stand­ing the cu­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal tim­ing of such ac­qui­si­tions)

11. Sud­den­ly em­bark­ing up­on a fren­zied rush of road-paving, even at night (ap­par­ent­ly, these things still have the abil­i­ty to sway vot­ers, notwith­stand­ing the cu­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal tim­ing)

MIS-STEPS

1. Re­fus­ing to pull back on the prop­er­ty tax regime or to axe the tax.

2. Call­ing an elec­tion ear­ly when you have a com­fort­able 26 seats and two-and-a-half years to go.

3. Not act­ing se­ri­ous­ly enough or de­ci­sive­ly enough on the find­ings of the Uff Com­mis­sion, and not yet lock­ing up Calder Hart's ar­se be­fore the elec­tion.

4. Alien­at­ing and sidelin­ing Pen­ny and some of her sup­port­ers in Ari­ma, when, in fact, Pen­ny could have been a good coun­ter­foil to the "woman pow­er" wave of sup­port for Kam­la.

5. Tear­ing up the PNM Man­i­festo. It did not look good do­ing it as a woman, and one who seeks to en­gen­der moth­er­ly and wom­an­ly virtues. If it had to be torn up, let Jack or one of the oth­ers do it.

6. Anand's pub­lic de­nounce­ment of Mr Dook­er­an, which was whol­ly un­nec­es­sary and came across as be­ing in rather poor taste.

7. Swarats­ingh's glib dis­missal of his fail­ure to prop­er­ly com­plete his dis­pen­sa­tion from his priest­ly vows.

8. For­mer Jus­tice Vol­ney's at­tempts at ex­plain­ing the sud­den­ness of his de­ci­sion and the events which may or may not have pre­ced­ed it.

9. At­tack­ing Makan­dal Dag­ga and seek­ing to paint him as a dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ist, when, in fact, the ef­fect of that black pow­er rev­o­lu­tion has em­pow­ered so many of our cit­i­zens to­day.

10. Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald: she is a mis-step all by her­self.

11. Storm­ing the of­fice of Anil Roberts. Why bring your­self down to that lev­el?

12. Leav­ing un­der-per­form­ers to fight the San Juan/Barataria seat. As poor a pol­i­cy as present tourism pol­i­cy.

13. Not tak­ing se­ri­ous­ly enough the ef­fect of "woman pow­er."

14. Fail­ing to agree to a live, tele­vised de­bate.

15. Try­ing to con­vince the na­tion that the elec­tion date was set since Oc­to­ber 9 last year.

16. Last-minute re­fusal by NALIS for the man­i­festo launch. Oh gorm! Use a lit­tle com­mon sense and diplo­mat­ic strat­e­gy, If not at NALIS, then grant them the use of NA­PA or even the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre at the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence. It would have shown mag­na­nim­i­ty and al­so made it hard­er for crit­i­cisms to be lev­elled at ei­ther of these build­ings.

17. Try­ing to pitch a US-styled Oba­ma-type cam­paign which at times had the ten­den­cy to ap­pear stilt­ed and wood­en.

18. Deny­ing Bernard Camp­bell en­try and then lat­er hav­ing to back down on the is­sue.