What a re­mark­able come­back for Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has served as Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader for 15 years and led the Op­po­si­tion UNC for ten years in Par­lia­ment since 2015.

Sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions are in or­der for a woman who has demon­strat­ed strength, courage, grit; and through all the storms, chal­lenges, at­tacks, er­rors and mishaps, has stood her ground, car­ried her par­ty loy­al­ists, who al­so kept faith with her, and af­ter ten years of pres­sure and per­son­al sac­ri­fice, is prime min­is­ter once more through the will of the ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers.

And it is a sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry. An elec­toral sweep in which she held on to all 19 seats she had and cap­tured ad­di­tion­al mar­gin­als along the East-West cor­ri­dor and in the South­west oil belt re­gion of Trinidad. This ex­pand­ed the UNC’s reach be­yond cen­tral and south and crossed all racial bar­ri­ers with a mo­men­tum dri­ven by re­sent­ment of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment; en­thu­si­asm of UNC par­ty loy­al­ists and a mul­ti-racial grass­roots and work­ers’ em­brace, made pos­si­ble by a union lead­er­ship which threw their weight ful­ly be­hind the UNC leader and a pos­i­tive cam­paign with a di­verse se­lec­tion of can­di­dates.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­sults pro­vid­ed by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion in­di­cate that just un­der 620,000 or 54% of the reg­is­tered elec­torate vot­ed. So al­most half of el­i­gi­ble vot­ers stayed away. Some 100,000-plus of them were PNM vot­ers who re­fused to vote or sat this elec­tion out. The rest were peo­ple who could not be moved by any par­ty. Cit­i­zens chose ei­ther to vote for one of the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties or ac­tive­ly with­hold their vote this time. The re­sult was a big loss for the PNM and a big win for the UNC coali­tion.

So, there is a part of Mon­day’s elec­tion that puts us as a coun­try, in the high­ly de­sir­able cat­e­go­ry of coun­tries with free and fair elec­tions, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly mon­i­tored, in this par­tic­u­lar case, by Cari­com and the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at. But al­so, T&T is one of those coun­tries in which elec­tion re­sults are gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed and tran­si­tion from one gov­ern­ment to an­oth­er on the ba­sis of the ex­pressed will of the peo­ple, can be ex­pect­ed to be trou­ble-free. That is some­thing to val­ue.

Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as leader of his par­ty, con­ced­ed ear­ly, with his prime min­is­te­r­i­al pick, Stu­art Young, who led the cam­paign, be­side him.

Me­dia in­ter­views with cit­i­zens showed ready ac­cep­tance of the re­sults, and this might well be by those who vot­ed, how­ev­er they vot­ed; as well as those who did not vote, but in­stead let those who were will­ing to vote de­cide the out­come.

The elec­tion was hard fought by both sides. One month ago, this elec­tion was im­pos­si­ble to call. In­ter­est was lim­it­ed, en­thu­si­asm low. Peo­ple were an­gry with the PNM and felt that af­ter ten years with lit­tle bet­ter in their lives, it had to go. Even some loy­al­ists ex­pressed this view open­ly.

But peo­ple were un­sure whether the UNC should be giv­en a sec­ond chance. In the end, the straw that might have bro­ken the camel’s back in psy­cho­log­i­cal terms, might well have been the hefty pen­sion and salary in­creas­es for the prime min­is­ter and the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, con­trast­ed with the 4% wage in­crease for work­ers and the feel­ing that the UNC had earned their op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Good gov­er­nance and a se­ri­ous, re­spon­si­ble and ac­count­able ap­proach to gov­ern­ment, in which lead­ers lev­el with the peo­ple and trans­par­ent­ly in­di­cate how they will pro­ceed and why, can bring ad­di­tion­al good­will to the new prime min­is­ter and her gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready in­di­cat­ed an in­clu­sive ap­proach to gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance. The catchy cam­paign song lines “When UNC wins, every­body wins” has set the tone. And the prime min­is­ter-elect has sig­nalled she will ho­n­our five cam­paign promis­es: pen­sion for the aged; lap­tops in schools; re­open­ing of the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal; 10 per cent in­creas­es to work­ers; and re­open­ing of the Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. All of these, if achieved, will help to dis­tance the UNC dra­mat­i­cal­ly from un­pop­u­lar PNM de­ci­sions.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar, please, do take stock of the dai­ly cash­flow for the last 90 days and have some­one mon­i­tor same for the next 90, Al­so, get the Cen­tral Bank to give an up-to-date pic­ture of the state of our coun­try’s fi­nances, our month­ly debt oblig­a­tions and their re­la­tion­ship to rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture.

And then, share your as­sess­ment of these re­al­i­ties with the peo­ple as you craft your way for­ward.

T&T is de­pend­ing on you and your new gov­ern­ment and al­most every cit­i­zen, as well as Cari­com friends and in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies, want you to suc­ceed. Make T&T win.