Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Hamid Ghany says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is caus­ing po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty by “toy­ing” with the op­po­si­tion and the pub­lic re­gard­ing the tim­ing of the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Dur­ing the PNM’s Sport and Fam­i­ly Day on June 23 at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, Dr Row­ley sug­gest­ed that the elec­tion would be soon. How­ev­er, on Mon­day in Par­lia­ment, he said he doesn’t plan to call elec­tions “very soon.”

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Prof Ghany de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­de­ci­sion as a cal­cu­lat­ed po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.  “The Prime Min­is­ter had to change his po­si­tion when the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion of­fered MP (Dr) Rai Rag­bir the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain him­self,” Ghany ex­plained.

Rag­bir broke ranks with the Op­po­si­tion and vot­ed with the Gov­ern­ment for the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill on June 22. He is fac­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion from the UNC.

Ghany al­so said the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­lay in call­ing the elec­tion pos­es risks. “The Prime Min­is­ter will be look­ing to see if the Op­po­si­tion will frac­ture. He has to time an elec­tion to avoid the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a T&TEC rate in­crease, which will ad­verse­ly af­fect the pub­lic. The Gov­ern­ment has al­ready re­duced the tax bur­den of the prop­er­ty tax from three per cent to two per cent in the hope that the elec­torate will be com­fort­ed by that,” he said.

How­ev­er, he added, “The risk is how the pub­lic will re­act to the prop­er­ty tax. That could im­pact the elec­tion date, as go­ing be­fore the im­ple­men­ta­tion might be eas­i­er than hav­ing to de­fend it on the cam­paign trail, as Patrick (Man­ning) did in 2010, when the pol­i­cy had been ap­proved by Par­lia­ment in 2009.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bishu Ra­goonath said he was not sur­prised by Dr Row­ley not stat­ing the elec­tion date. He not­ed that the coun­try has un­til No­vem­ber 2025 to re­turn to the polls.

How­ev­er, he does not think it is caus­ing any po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty. “I am not sur­prised at all. This is nor­mal pol­i­tics in T&T. “There is no added risk, whether it is now or then. The Prime Min­is­ter may be­lieve that his par­ty could be at greater risk next year if he calls an ear­ly elec­tion. But if he sees there is no ad­di­tion­al risk, he can de­lay as long as he wants,” Ra­goonath said.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James al­so com­ment­ed on the mat­ter, say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has not ad­dressed crime, which is hurt­ing the pop­u­la­tion. He said the Prime Min­is­ter was caus­ing un­cer­tain­ty among the elec­torate by “chang­ing his tune.”

Mean­while, deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, claimed the Prime Min­is­ter could not be trust­ed. “This is the Prime Min­is­ter who in­di­cat­ed they would not close down Petrotrin, and then he did. So, when he says there will be no ear­ly elec­tions, one can nev­er take his word on any mat­ter,” Dr Mooni­lal said.

De­spite this, Dr Mooni­lal said the UNC was ready.  “We have mo­bil­i­sa­tion, on-the-ground can­vass­ing, meet­ings, and ar­tic­u­lat­ing poli­cies on sev­er­al sec­toral is­sues, deal­ing with is­sues of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter for a com­ment, but there was no re­sponse.