Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst has high­light­ed the risk tak­en by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she in­vit­ed oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties to join forces with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to con­test lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions on Au­gust 14.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany said the strat­e­gy threat­ens to di­min­ish how many votes the UNC earns. ccord­ing to Ghany, pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion changes the dy­nam­ic since po­lit­i­cal par­ties will on­ly be able to ap­point an al­der­man if they re­ceive less than 25 per cent of votes cast in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. This means pop­u­lar sup­port will be tak­en in­to ac­count while those with few­er votes will lose the elec­toral race.

“The key to it is that it would have to be done on the ba­sis of al­lo­cat­ing a full cor­po­ra­tion to a third par­ty, as op­posed to the UNC and an­oth­er par­ty choos­ing to cher­ry-pick cer­tain seats with­in a cor­po­ra­tion and that would com­pro­mise the amount of votes that they will ac­tu­al­ly earn to­wards the se­lec­tion of al­der­men,” he said.

Ghany said the UNC might strike a deal with small­er par­ties, al­low­ing them to chal­lenge the PNM on its be­half if they agree to re­frain from chal­leng­ing the UNC in oth­er cor­po­ra­tions.

How­ev­er, Ghany re­called that there were chal­lenges in 2010 when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion was formed. He al­so warned that the UNC should be se­lec­tive about which po­lit­i­cal par­ties it works with to pre­vent chal­lenges in the fu­ture.

“You have to try and make sure that the ne­go­ti­a­tion is go­ing to be clean enough that the par­ty that you’re deal­ing with is not go­ing to put up a can­di­date against your can­di­date. So, it’s a sit­u­a­tion where you want to maybe give an en­tire cor­po­ra­tion to one par­ty,” he said.

Geopo­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said Per­sad-Bisses­sar must as­sess her lead­er­ship style with­in the UNC be­fore invit­ing oth­ers to join as he re­called the ex­its of for­mer UNC mem­bers Jack Warn­er, Ra­mona Ram­di­al, Vas­ant Bharath, Dr Fuad Khan and Mick­ela Pan­day.

“If Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar wants to be as mag­nan­i­mous as she ap­peared on that plat­form on Mon­day night, she first has to fix her own par­ty,” he said.

Dr Mo­hammed fur­ther ques­tioned which po­lit­i­cal par­ties will be will­ing to join the UNC, point­ing out that an al­liance will be an­nounced by a coali­tion at Movie Towne on Wednes­day. That press con­fer­ence will be host­ed by Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty leader Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der, who re­ject­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call for uni­ty among small­er par­ties dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

More­over, the po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst sug­gest­ed that many UNC mem­bers are be­wil­dered and are sup­pos­ed­ly look­ing to the PNM for sta­bil­i­ty.

“I am con­cerned. The UNC seems to be des­per­ate at this time be­cause with the res­ig­na­tions and the shift­ing of per­sons from the UNC to the PNM, it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that per­sons who have shift­ed are align­ing to the PNM be­cause of ide­ol­o­gy and philos­phy but they are align­ing to the PNM be­cause they seek struc­ture, they seek strat­e­gy and they see an op­por­tu­ni­ty,” he said.

PNM un­fazed by UNC’s coali­tion call

PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi al­so com­ment­ed on the UNC’s in­vi­ta­tion to third po­lit­i­cal par­ties to team up to chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment. He said the PNM cel­e­brates the virtues of T&T’s democ­ra­cy and is fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form by ex­pand­ing the au­ton­o­my of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

“We stand as ad­vo­cates for greater pow­er for cor­po­ra­tions led by full time coun­cil­lors with the sup­ple­men­ta­tion of rev­enue by res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax­es. The UNC stands in full and com­plete op­po­si­tion to this re­form which sim­ply de­fies com­mon sense and log­ic,” he said.

As for the threat of a coali­tion ahead of polls, Al-Rawi said the PNM will meet its po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents on the cam­paign trail.

The UNC and PNM are still screen­ing can­di­dates for lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Nom­i­na­tion day will be on June 26 while lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions will take place on Au­gust 14.