To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The al­liance of the op­po­si­tion par­ties is on the road, even if it is not clear at this stage what ex­act­ly is be­ing aimed at. It how­ev­er seems to be a work in progress.

But sure­ly the thou­sands of sup­port­ers and cu­ri­ous on­look­ers gath­ered at the his­toric Char­lie King Junc­tion in Fyz­abad on Wednes­day night, would be pre­pared to in­vest new trust and fall in love once again with the po­lit­i­cal amal­gam that is tak­ing shape. On the specifics of what has been struck, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, which the par­ties de­scribe as be­ing a part­ner­ship for sus­tain­able good gov­er­nance in T&T, was signed, giv­ing a gen­er­al feel of what is be­ing at­tempt­ed.�Es­sen­tial­ly the state­ment com­mits the par­ties to "pool their con­sid­er­able re­sources in the na­tion­al in­ter­est at this crit­i­cal junc­ture in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go." Sig­nif­i­cant too is the com­mit­ment to a "peo­ple-ori­ent­ed and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry gov­ern­ment." Be­yond the specifics of a com­mit­ment to sup­port UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date of the al­liance, the doc­u­ment is short on specifics. It pro­vides on­ly a gen­er­al com­mit­ment to a com­mon plat­form, a pub­lic pol­i­cy pro­gramme, and mech­a­nisms for achiev­ing con­sen­sus in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The ex­pec­ta­tion is that as the cam­paign pro­ceeds, the elec­torate must be giv­en more sub­stance about the al­liance and the con­crete el­e­ments of its pro­gramme. Such de­tails are ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary if elec­tors are to com­mit them­selves to plac­ing their trust in this loose group­ing to gov­ern the coun­try for a five-year pe­ri­od. The lead­ers must be ful­ly aware that the same pub­lic that is turn­ing out in its thou­sands to the group­ing's pub­lic meet­ings will be most un­for­giv­ing if the lead­ers pro­cras­ti­nate in out­lin­ing in great de­tail their po­si­tion on a wide range of pub­lic pol­i­cy is­sues. Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to the pub­lic would be how Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar rec­on­ciles the po­si­tions tak­en by Er­rol McLeod and David Ab­du­lah, the two se­nior, left-lean­ing labour lead­ers in the al­liance, against the main­stream of eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial thought that uni­fies both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties. It is to be ex­pect­ed that these vo­cal and per­sua­sive labour lead­ers would seek al­ways to ad­vance the in­ter­ests of work­ers at the ex­pense of the in­ter­ests of the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor and the for­eign multi­na­tion­als that dom­i­nate this coun­try's en­er­gy sec­tor. It must be not­ed that the lo­cal and for­eign pri­vate sec­tors gen­er­ate about 90 per cent of T&T's tax­es and are re­spon­si­ble for a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the coun­try's em­ploy­ment.

If the UN­COP forms the next gov­ern­ment, can the pub­lic be as­sured that the two com­rades in the bo­som of what would be the rul­ing par­ty will not adopt poli­cies, rhetoric and ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tions sim­i­lar to that spout­ed by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez, the Cas­tro broth­ers in Cu­ba, and Bo­livia's Evo Morales? Of course, it is quite pos­si­ble that the po­si­tions pre­vi­ous­ly held by the labour lead­ers would soft­en with the pas­sage of time, the col­lapse of most com­mu­nist regimes in the world, the re­al­i­ty of glob­al­i­sa­tion, and the dom­i­nance of neo-lib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism. But the dis­cern­ing pub­lic de­serves some clar­i­ty on the ide­o­log­i­cal and pol­i­cy po­si­tions of these two men.

While the op­po­si­tion par­ties work hard at reach­ing an ac­com­mo­da­tion no mat­ter the dif­fi­cul­ties along that road, the lead­ers must come clean on the ide­o­log­i­cal is­sue be­fore too much longer. Like the West In­dies crick­et team on too many re­cent oc­ca­sions, the lead­ers of this "dream team" of so many dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests would be run­ning the risk of snatch­ing de­feat from the jaws of elec­toral vic­to­ry if they choose to ven­ture to the gen­er­al elec­tion with­out ad­dress­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal is­sue.