In this sum­ma­ry re­count­ing the per­for­mance of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment, it’s clear that she has been trapped in the op­po­si­tion­ist pol­i­tics mode laid down by her pre­de­ces­sors.

Bas­deo Pan­day once not­ed af­ter be­com­ing prime min­is­ter on the first oc­ca­sion that he was so in­ured to the role of the leader of the Op­po­si­tion and Man­ning as the prime min­is­ter that at times he re­ferred to him­self in his pre­vi­ous role.

In keep­ing with the con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture and func­tion­ing of the Par­lia­ment, the Op­po­si­tion Leader and his/her team can do lit­tle else but stand in the Par­lia­ment and de­liv­er po­lit­i­cal strokes over the backs of the Gov­ern­ment in of­fice. Out­side the cham­ber, the role of op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans is to ra­ma­jay on the stomp against every ini­tia­tive, thought, pro­gramme and per­ceived cor­rupt or oth­er­wise deal­ing of the ex­ec­u­tive.

In that role Op­po­si­tion Leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar has main­ly fo­cused on re­ac­tive crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment, its poli­cies and pro­grammes, which is in the na­ture of the pol­i­tics and which has all but been baked in­to the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem op­er­at­ed here. It’s a sys­tem in which the Op­po­si­tion is left with few op­tions of a sig­nif­i­cant kind but to op­pose. In the few in­stances in which the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion is re­quired to per­form mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, the hold­er of the of­fice has lit­tle room for cre­ative po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion.

In what has be­come quite po­lit­i­cal­ly and vi­su­al­ly live­ly and ap­peal­ing cam­paign­ing, po­lit­i­cal leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar has en­gaged the week­ly tele­vi­sion Mon­day night fo­rum and used it for the par­ty’s main over­ture to the elec­torate.

But in­side of the Par­lia­ment, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made lit­tle im­pact on the op­er­a­tions of the Gov­ern­ment ex­cept for block­ing on a few oc­ca­sions leg­is­la­tion which re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty which the Gov­ern­ment does not have. One sig­nif­i­cant such in­stance has been mak­ing it known that it will op­pose any in­ten­tion and at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to have the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice re­place the Privy Coun­cil as the fi­nal court of ap­peal for T&T.

An­oth­er as­pect of the UNC pol­i­tics which Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not in­vent but has played out su­perbly is the pol­i­tics of dis­in­te­gra­tion. Not on­ly was she un­able to hold to­geth­er the coali­tion Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship of 2010, which won the Gov­ern­ment, but with­in her own par­ty, she has presided over a num­ber of fall­outs lead­ing right up to the doorstep of the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion.

It’s the sec­ond lead-in to an elec­tion that she has dis­pensed with a num­ber of en­trenched UNC MPs. Such po­lit­i­cal house-clear­ing is al­ways fraught with con­flict; it has not been dif­fer­ent on this oc­ca­sion.

As in the na­ture of what I called at the top “op­po­si­tion­ist pol­i­tics,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­cen­trat­ed her ef­forts on crit­i­cism of the poli­cies and pro­grammes of the Gov­ern­ment and took par­tic­u­lar aim at Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and “Row­ley”; she may have gained a mea­sure of trac­tion by the strat­e­gy, the two hav­ing got out of the po­lit­i­cal fir­ing range.

Over the last cou­ple weeks of cam­paign­ing, since the elec­tion date was an­nounced, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­cen­trat­ed on promis­ing a range of bet­ter-times pro­grammes and fi­nan­cial en­tice­ments to cer­tain groups of the elec­torate.

Amongst the promis­es made were salary ne­go­ti­a­tions for pub­lic ser­vants start­ing at ten per cent, the cut­ting out and trim­ming of var­i­ous tax­es in­clu­sive of VAT and prop­er­ty tax­es, in­creas­ing the fu­el sub­sidy and a few of the same na­ture, ie, ones which give hope to the groups iden­ti­fied.

What is se­ri­ous­ly lack­ing is a com­pre­hen­sive plan through which the UNC of­fers can be fi­nan­cial­ly re­alised. Iron­i­cal­ly, the al­leged ab­sence of a plan to dri­ve a na­tion­al ef­fort has been one of the ma­jor in­dict­ments that the Op­po­si­tion Leader has made against the Gov­ern­ment. The same can now be asked of her: “Where is the plan to ad­dress the fun­da­men­tal needs of the econ­o­my, poli­ty, and crim­i­nal­i­ty, the lat­ter be­yond plac­ing a not­ed crime fight­er amongst the can­di­dates of the UNC?”

Notwith­stand­ing those eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied de­fi­cien­cies of lead­er­ship to take the coun­try for­ward if elect­ed to of­fice at the end of this month, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has the as­sured vot­ing sup­port of her par­ty’s faith­ful.

On yet an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, the UNC has al­so struck re­la­tion­ships with a cou­ple of small po­lit­i­cal out­fits to hope­ful­ly help the par­ty get over the line on polling day. As in the past, the UNC and its as­so­ci­at­ed par­ties will have to face the chal­lenge of hold­ing to­geth­er whether in op­po­si­tion or in gov­ern­ment.

Notwith­stand­ing the ab­sence up to this point of ver­i­fi­able and re­li­able opin­ion polls, there is a gen­er­al view based on seats tra­di­tion­al­ly held by the two ma­jor trib­al par­ties that the out­come of the elec­tion in Trinidad will be close. As stat­ed in this col­umn on a pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion, if the cir­cum­stances evolve such that the two seats in To­ba­go can de­ter­mine which par­ty walks away with the Gov­ern­ment, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, as po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty, will po­si­tion his par­ty to horse trade.

But the three-week pe­ri­od be­fore the elec­tion leaves, in re­al­i­ty, an eter­ni­ty for po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing er­rors, fool­ish and/or smart state­ments by politi­cians and rev­e­la­tions of one kind or the oth­er.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine—In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.