Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

While there is still no date for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions that is legal­ly due this year, it’s clear that the lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paigns by the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties—the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress—are well un­der­way. The prover­bial elec­tion bell has rung.

Last Thurs­day, PNM held a pub­lic meet­ing at San Fer­nan­do City Hall. While, on Mon­day night, the UNC held its pub­lic meet­ing at Na­pari­ma Col­lege, al­so in San Fer­nan­do.

On both plat­forms, the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers crit­i­cised each oth­er fierce­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the top­ic of the privy coun­cil’s rul­ing that the Gov­ern­ment could not ex­tend the term of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions by a year.

And, in the af­ter­math of the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing and with the com­ing elec­tion in mind, sev­er­al well-known po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists are shar­ing their per­spec­tives on the core is­sues and dy­nam­ics at play head­ing in­to the elec­tion.

The po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists said that while Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions are of­ten pre­dictably de­cid­ed by par­ty loy­al­ists along racial lines, grow­ing dis­con­tent with present-day pol­i­tics and gov­er­nance of­fers could of­fer a chance for un­pre­dictable out­comes.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

“The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions may be re­gard­ed as a barom­e­ter of pub­lic opin­ion on Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance if the turnout were to ex­ceed 50 per cent which has nev­er hap­pened be­fore.

“It is quite pos­si­ble that many third par­ties out­side of the PNM and the UNC may par­tic­i­pate in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions be­cause of the use of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion to cal­cu­late the al­lo­ca­tion of the four al­der­men in each cor­po­ra­tion. In oth­er words, no votes are wast­ed as all votes are count­ed in each cor­po­ra­tion to al­lo­cate al­der­men and it is pos­si­ble for a par­ty that did not win a seat on the first past the post sys­tem to win an al­der­man’s seat be­cause they got 25 per cent of the votes cast through­out the cor­po­ra­tion.”

Dr Shane Mo­hammed

“I think we are at a stage where the po­lit­i­cal par­ties don’t re­alise that so­ci­ety is fed up with the rhetoric, the non­sense, the lies, the back-and-forth, the ad­ver­sar­i­al be­hav­iour. I mean our main lead­ers—Row­ley and Per­sad-Bisses­sar—can’t even sit in the same room and have a de­cent con­ver­sa­tion as did Pan­day and Man­ning in the past. What ex­am­ple are they set­ting? What they are set­ting is the stage for the rise of new lead­er­ship, which is what the coun­try is in des­per­ate need of. But we won’t see that un­til 2025.

“My eyes are on Diego Mar­tin to see if the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance will have an im­pact there. My eyes are on San­gre Grande. We’ve seen two res­ig­na­tions from two UNC coun­cil­lors in Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co and Ari­ma. I think that is go­ing to hurt the UNC be­cause the UNC con­tin­ues to suf­fer from a lev­el of weak lead­er­ship and a lot of rhetoric. Peo­ple are not pay­ing at­ten­tion as much. They ben­e­fit from tra­di­tion­al vot­ers. If peo­ple choose to vote (for UNC) in the lo­cal elec­tion, they may ben­e­fit from the sim­ple fact that peo­ple would choose them as the al­ter­na­tive.

“Peo­ple who have not walked elec­toral dis­tricts and con­stituen­cies since 2020 are now walk­ing like it’s go­ing out of style be­cause they are in des­per­ate need to hold on and it’s a race to cap­ture and show who has the stronger hand. Yes, elec­tions are a com­pe­ti­tion, but be­hind the com­pe­ti­tion, there is some­thing else. There are peo­ple, lives, and liveli­hoods that are af­fect­ed by that. We are in a sit­u­a­tion and a co­nun­drum where peo­ple are get­ting blind­ed by the grandeur of of­fice, the pres­tige and the rank­ing thing. You see that non­sense, if those things con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate, then peo­ple are go­ing to con­tin­ue to have ap­a­thy. Our so­ci­ety is suf­fer­ing from great ap­a­thy, as well as, they are say­ing—peo­ple don’t like PNM. They don’t like the gov­er­nance struc­ture the PNM is us­ing—their mech­a­nisms.”

Dr Win­ford James

“The Gov­ern­ment may be at a dis­ad­van­tage here be­cause they are pre­sid­ing over the gov­er­nance of the coun­try which is plagued by prob­lems such as crime, poor in­fra­struc­ture where roads are con­cerned, and where the util­i­ties are con­cerned like wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. I my­self don’t like to dri­ve on un­even sur­faces, and every time I leave home, I find my­self dri­ving along the East­ern Main Road which is a mess where dri­ving with ease and com­fort is con­cerned. Peo­ple note these things and are won­der­ing if the gov­ern­ment couldn’t solve that prob­lem in the eight years, then. The Gov­ern­ment is in the dri­ver’s seat and they have to run the coun­try for the wel­fare of the cit­i­zen­ry, and a lot of cit­i­zens are less than im­pressed by what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and how the Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions.

“The new par­ties will al­ways live in hope and they can­not join ei­ther of the two main­stream par­ties, but at the same time, they don’t have the ap­peal to the peo­ple who have vot­ed for the two main­stream par­ties for a long time, and who have done so re­li­gious­ly. It doesn’t mean that it can­not hap­pen, but it hasn’t hap­pened no­tice­ably in our po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry.

“The Op­po­si­tion al­ways has to live in hope. It was 8-6 two elec­tions ago, and then they won a seat and be­came even with the PNM in the last elec­tion. The ques­tion is whether you can con­sid­er that mo­men­tum or an ac­ci­dent of sorts, and whether they are go­ing to win an­oth­er cor­po­ra­tion. Some peo­ple think San Fer­nan­do is up for grabs.”

Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath

“The most im­por­tant thing in a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions is the over­whelm­ing role of par­ty pol­i­tics be­cause al­ready you have a low vot­er turnout. You’re not ex­pect­ing peo­ple who sit on the fence to come out and make a dif­fer­ence one way or the oth­er. How­ev­er, with new par­ties com­ing on the scene, what would be in­ter­est­ing to see in this elec­tion is—What sup­port base those new par­ties would be able to muster as we move to the elec­tion. I don’t know how many of the par­ties will con­test the elec­tion. For in­stance, if the PDP has said they are go­ing to con­test Port-of-Spain, San Juan/Barataria, and Diego Mar­tin, if they man­age to win just one seat, for ex­am­ple, then that would tell you of a lev­el of dis­en­chant­ment with the par­ty that would have lost.

“If, for in­stance, a par­ty is ac­cus­tomed to get­ting let’s say 40 per cent of the vote in a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion and they get a small­er turnout, then that would be wor­ry­ing for the par­ty. If, how­ev­er, the par­ty con­tin­ues to main­tain the lev­el of vot­ing in a lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll, then that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly per­mit a le­git­i­mate barom­e­ter for a gen­er­al elec­tion.”