Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) could face an up­hill bat­tle in the next gen­er­al elec­tion if Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley stays at the helm, say po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany and Dr Win­ford James.

Two days af­ter the PNM’s 7-7 tie with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE), Ghany, Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said the elec­torate could see Dr Row­ley shift his fo­cus to­wards find­ing a re­place­ment be­cause if he doesn’t bow out grace­ful­ly, PNM sup­port­ers may be at a dis­ad­van­tage.

“The PNM with a new leader go­ing in­to 2025 will be a for­mi­da­ble force. The PNM go­ing in­to 2025 with Dr Row­ley again as the leader will have some chal­lenges for many of the PNM sup­port­ers. They sent a mes­sage on Mon­day, and I think Dr Row­ley may want to con­sid­er—he’s brought the par­ty this far, he may want to be able to car­ry the par­ty close enough to the elec­tion where they can find a new leader and then let the par­ty go in­to a cam­paign with a new leader that will clear­ly make them stronger and put pres­sure on the UNC,” Ghany said.

This sen­ti­ment was echoed by James, who said suc­ces­sion plan­ning could be the way for­ward for Dr Row­ley. How­ev­er, he said gen­er­al elec­tions are too far off to make de­c­la­ra­tions on the fu­ture lead­er­ship of the PNM or UNC.

More­over, he said nei­ther Dr Row­ley nor UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have much to cel­e­brate based on Mon­day’s re­sults.

“There is no re­al man­date com­ing from the elec­torate with re­spect to any of the po­si­tions that they had be­fore the elec­tions. There may be more peo­ple vot­ing UNC, yes, but that car­ries us nowhere in this coun­try,” James said.

“It is not even a ba­sis for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. If you have a tie hap­pen­ing all the time, then you will have to break that tie some­how and there­fore you will need to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion in re­la­tion to that fact but noth­ing about the re­sults here give any­body a ba­sis for crow­ing about what they achieved in terms of num­bers.”

Pro­fes­sor Ghany said the UNC’c claim of the pop­u­lar vote marks some mea­sure of suc­cess, as he re­called that pre­lim­i­nary re­sults by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), pri­or to re­counts, saw the UNC re­ceiv­ing 173,691 votes while the PNM got 130,868 votes.

James did not agree, as he said there was no re­al im­pact since the dead­lock re­mained.

“She has not been win­ning elec­tions but she has been re­tain­ing her base. Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly, there is no re­al ad­van­tage ex­cept from a psy­cho­log­i­cal point of view,” he said.

On the road to gen­er­al elec­tions in 2025, Ghany be­lieves the elec­torate is see­ing a trans­for­ma­tion in the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s pol­i­tick­ing.

He said gone are the days when Per­sad-Bisses­sar amassed sup­port by pre­sent­ing her­self as a moth­er to the na­tion. Now, he said “load up the ‘mat­ic” has be­come a bat­tle cry that, de­spite harsh cri­tique from the PNM, has seem­ing­ly res­onat­ed with the pop­u­la­tion.

He was ref­er­enc­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pro­pos­al to bring stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion to com­bat crime, which was a cen­tral theme dur­ing her LGE cam­paign.

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is try­ing to re­brand her­self and by adopt­ing the more bel­liger­ent ap­proach, she has earned more suc­cess. The for­mer ma­ter­nal ap­proach has failed and will con­tin­ue to fail. Peo­ple want to fight back and they want to find a way to fight back. She may very well have walked in­to some­thing that could bear po­lit­i­cal fruit for her,” Ghany said.

He added that to ri­val this, the Gov­ern­ment has to wres­tle with and con­trol the crime sit­u­a­tion.

How­ev­er, James said the re­sults do not pro­vide any proof that cit­i­zens were in sup­port of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s cam­paign promise.

Con­sid­er­ing that one day in pol­i­tics is a life­time, James said a lot can hap­pen be­tween now and the next polls which could sway vot­ers in any di­rec­tion.