Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has to shoul­der the blame for the par­ty’s huge loss at yes­ter­day’s poll.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany held this view last evening dur­ing CNC3’s Bat­tle For Pow­er pro­gramme, fol­low­ing Row­ley’s speech con­ced­ing de­feat to the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Coali­tion of in­ter­ests.

With the PNM be­ing led by two peo­ple - Row­ley as po­lit­i­cal leader and Stu­art Young as Prime Min­is­ter - Ghany said, “That strat­e­gy failed mis­er­ably and that must be owned by Dr Row­ley be­cause he force-fed Stu­art Young on the par­ty (PNM) and the coun­try and the coun­try got in­di­ges­tion.”

Ghany, who was among a six-mem­ber pan­el, al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar on what he saw as “one of the biggest po­lit­i­cal come­backs in the his­to­ry of T&T. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was con­sid­ered po­lit­i­cal­ly dead and writ­ten off a long time ago. 

He added his poll, pub­lished by Guardian Me­dia, which came un­der heavy pub­lic scruti­ny,  “got it right” with the UNC at 45 per cent and the PNM at 30 per cent of the votes.  

Ghany said the elec­tion re­sults showed that the unions were the de­cid­ing fac­tor and that they ought nev­er to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

Ex­tend­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to in­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC,  for­mer PNM min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said it is al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­tro­spec­tion on the PNM’s part, hav­ing lost sig­nif­i­cant ground. He was con­fi­dent the par­ty would be re­ward­ed with restora­tion to a strength­ened po­si­tion.

“It’s a case of ac­cept­ing the re­sults and find­ing strength in the mes­sages that the pop­u­la­tion has sent to us. It is al­ways an op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove our of­fer­ing for the next time around. Let’s move for­ward and let’s al­ways put our best foot, our shoul­der to the wheel for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Browne.

With the elec­tion over, econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan said start­ing to­day the fo­cus must be on the is­sue of gov­er­nance.

“Now we have to see how a new ver­sion of the UNC gov­erns an econ­o­my that is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult,” she said.

Warn­ing that the road ahead was not go­ing to be easy, econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attz said “It is go­ing to be fraught with chal­lenges from the fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. How do you close the fis­cal gap.” 

She said find­ing the means to de­liv­er the nu­mer­ous cam­paign promis­es was im­por­tant.  

For­mer UNC Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles, who had heav­i­ly crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship, al­so ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to her. He said soon­er or lat­er is­sues, such as food se­cu­ri­ty, for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, and in­come equal­i­ty must be ad­dressed by the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment for the bet­ter­ment of T&T. 

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James re­act­ed to the elec­tion in Latin, which when trans­lat­ed meant, “The voice of the peo­ple is the voice of God.”