I leave the con­stituen­cy break­down to the polls and poll­sters as to which of the two ma­jor par­ties will hold on to their ex­ist­ing seats and which one will take seats away from the oth­er. Even fur­ther in­to the sta­tis­ti­cal polling, the ques­tion to be an­swered is whether, in the in­stance of To­ba­go, the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty, new on the gen­er­al elec­tion front, will take away the two seats which the PNM won in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion, and if so, how will the horse-trad­ing “go down” af­ter an elec­tion which does not have an out­right win­ner with a work­able ma­jor­i­ty?

Or in­deed, will the To­ba­go elec­tors vote dif­fer­ent­ly in the gen­er­al elec­tions from how they did in the “Ah we boy” House of As­sem­bly poll?

In­stead, I fo­cus on the feel­ing on the ground, the ef­fects of the cam­paigns of the PNM and the UNC, the kind of im­pres­sion they have left be­hind, and the qual­i­ty or lack of it in gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion in the last ten years and how the lead­ers of the two par­ties have fared in de­liv­er­ing qual­i­ty gov­er­nance to the elec­torate and coun­try.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, the months-long vi­su­als of the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum on tele­vi­sion have cre­at­ed an im­age of a par­ty alive and spoil­ing for a fight. Af­ter months of on-and-off as­so­ci­a­tions with mi­nor po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­ter­nal con­vul­sions with­in the par­ty, there is on the sur­face a mea­sure of co­he­sion be­fore the elec­torate.

As to the as­so­ci­a­tion of the small­er par­ties with the UNC, there is no sense of co­he­sion, no set of com­mon prin­ci­ples to in­form the di­rec­tion in and out of gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion. The his­to­ry of such as­so­ci­a­tions (they re­al­ly can­not be truth­ful­ly re­ferred to as “coali­tions”) por­tends dis­as­ter for the fu­ture.

Some vi­su­al, cel­e­bra­to­ry im­por­tance has been the few crossovers and vi­su­al pres­ence of the likes of Sel­wyn Cud­joe, Jack Warn­er, John Je­re­mie, and Kennedy Swarats­ingh on UNC plat­forms, with warm em­braces from the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader. That, how­ev­er, can have the oth­er ef­fect of PNM peo­ple see­ing them as trai­tors and there­fore de­ter­mined to come out against the UNC.

Of greater im­por­tance has been the for­mer se­nior supt, Roger Alexan­der, placed on the bal­lot in the hot­ly con­test­ed Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy. He is, how­ev­er, up against the very pop­u­lar Es­mond Forde, who had a 2,000-plus lead of votes from the last elec­tion. The hype over Alexan­der has not been so over­whelm­ing as to ex­pect de­fin­i­tive change.

The move­ment of Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la from the UNC to the PNM plat­form has been a mere rip­ple on the sur­face.

The Aranguez/St Joseph con­stituen­cy, with the PNM’s Ter­rence Deyals­ingh hav­ing achieved a mere 800-plus votes five years ago, seems far more vul­ner­a­ble to be­ing over­tak­en. How­ev­er, there is no con­sen­sus as to whose votes Gary Grif­fith, the third can­di­date, will take.

Out­side of spec­u­la­tion on the num­bers, the great­est boosts for the UNC are the fail­ures of the PNM Gov­ern­ment over the last ten years. Yes, PM Row­ley had a few suc­cess­es, but he was not able to deal de­fin­i­tive­ly with the con­tin­u­ing in­sur­gence of crime and make an im­pact on the his­tor­i­cal ob­jec­tive of trans­form­ing the econ­o­my from al­most com­plete de­pen­dence on en­er­gy.

Those fail­ures have giv­en weighty am­mu­ni­tion to the UNC, but they al­so place a bur­den on it to in­di­cate how it can deal suc­cess­ful­ly with those chal­lenges.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young did not al­low him­self suf­fi­cient time to at least cre­ate an im­pres­sion of hav­ing what it takes to counter the ma­jor prob­lems. The slay­ing of the Drag­on (apolo­gies for the over­worked cliché) has robbed him of a ma­jor plat­form up­on which to cam­paign.

What all of the above does is to say that the two par­ties af­ter the whirl­wind cam­paign­ing are like ca­lyp­son­ian Rio’s ”Back to Ba­sics”, de­pen­dent on trib­al al­lure and par­ty fa­nati­cism to in­sert them in­to of­fice. In this re­spect, the UNC sup­port­ers are less like­ly to de­vi­ate from their trib­al par­ty and are with­out the gov­ern­ment fail­ures of the last ten years. What it does have though is a his­to­ry of frac­tur­ing in of­fice in­side and out­side of coali­tion arrange­ments and a po­lit­i­cal leader whose ac­com­plish­ments as a prime min­is­ter and leader are far from be­ing dis­tin­guished; her own ball and chain.

Nei­ther of the op­tions holds out great hope ahead. In the Young PNM, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. In the end, it can be that des­per­ate for re­lief from the bur­den of crime and hope for eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and growth will ush­er the UNC in­to pow­er.

Notwith­stand­ing the polling which claims that PNM is ahead in the two par­lia­men­tary seats in To­ba­go, the out­come of the vot­ing there can be crit­i­cal to the elec­tion of a na­tion­al gov­ern­ment.

What the PNM has in its favour is the tra­di­tion of hav­ing a great elec­tion ma­chin­ery to get its sup­port­ers to the polls. Based on the cam­paign, the move­ment away from the PNM and the strength of the as­so­ci­a­tion of the mi­nor par­ties with the UNC do not match what tran­spired in 1986 and 2010. There is no ev­i­dence that will hap­pen to­mor­row.

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.