Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

T&T is now less than two months away from re­turn­ing to the polls for the Au­gust 14, 2023, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

With po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists like Dr Win­ford James and Dr Shane Mo­hammed high­light­ing sev­er­al is­sues af­fect­ing the elec­torate in­clud­ing de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture, high lev­els of crime, un­em­ploy­ment and in­fla­tion, the Sun­day Guardian set out to speak with young po­ten­tial vot­ers about their thoughts head­ing in­to the elec­tions.

Speak­ing to peo­ple be­tween the ages of 19 to 35 years, across parts of east and west Trinidad over the past week, we re­ceived an over­whelm­ing num­ber of claims of dis­en­chant­ment and dis­plea­sure to­wards the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance and pol­i­tics.

While the re­spon­dents var­ied from con­struc­tion work­ers to UWI stu­dents, from bank work­ers to un­em­ployed sin­gle moth­ers, their re­spons­es were sim­i­lar–they all said there was a sense of hope­less­ness with­in their gen­er­a­tion about the cur­rent state and fu­ture of the coun­try.

Their gen­er­al sen­ti­ment was that the main po­lit­i­cal par­ties lack con­nec­tion to to­day’s youth and are fail­ing to in­spire through pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy-mak­ing which has left the coun­try stag­nant.

Most of them felt that vot­ing in the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions would do lit­tle to change things in any mean­ing­ful way.

Do­minique Leza­ma, 23, UWI stu­dent

“The Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cates their mon­ey to some of the dumb­est caus­es. It’s like a black hole. We have a lot of ed­u­cat­ed, well-trained pro­fes­sion­als here in Trinidad, but we have nowhere to put them be­cause so much of it is a man­age­ment is­sue. So when it comes to my vote, it feels like no mat­ter who I vote for, we are so stuck in our ways. There’s no way for us, as a pop­u­lace, to di­rect­ly com­mu­ni­cate with our politi­cians. There’s a huge sense of dis­con­nect. I feel no one’s ac­tu­al is­sues are be­ing ad­dressed.

“I have so many friends and they say, as soon as I get this de­gree, I am out of here. This is a sink­ing ship. If there was a well-fund­ed, well-es­tab­lished par­ty with a lot of pro­gres­sive ideals, they would have my vote ab­solute­ly be­cause these peo­ple are giv­ing us noth­ing. Lit­er­al­ly noth­ing. I’m ask­ing for so lit­tle. Like just give us a state ad­dress–where you’re say­ing we’re gonna try some­thing new and dif­fer­ent. The kids are de­pressed. Our schools are un­der­staffed and un­der­fund­ed. My moth­er is a pri­ma­ry school teacher and to hear what they go through is ter­ri­ble.

“When I got old­er, I re­alised none of them are run­ning on pol­i­cy. What are you do­ing dif­fer­ent­ly to in­crease the qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple? It was an ab­solute spit in the face when they re­moved tar­iffs on lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles, I’m like, look at the price of flour in the su­per­mar­ket. It’s $100. How are you putting food in your chil­dren’s lunch kits? In fact, it is just cheap­er to buy fast food than it is to make a meal at home.”

Jabez Ro­driguez, 20, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions

“I will be vot­ing in the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. I nev­er vot­ed, but this will most like­ly be my first time. Every­one has a right to vote, de­pend­ing on your choice and what you want for your coun­try. It’s what each par­ty is do­ing for your coun­try, and whichev­er is the bet­ter one, you vote for them. And so far, none of them are do­ing bet­ter. We need some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’m will­ing to give a new par­ty a chance.”

UWI student Cassidy Robinson.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL

Cas­sidy Robin­son, 20, UWI stu­dent

“No (I have no mo­ti­va­tion to vote). We can see it get­ting pro­gres­sive­ly worse, and I feel like there’s no glim­mer of hope that it’s go­ing to get bet­ter. We just want to leave be­fore it ends up like Venezuela. Oil is gone. We can’t do any­thing. Let’s look at some­thing else, like tourism, mar­ket­ing. Let’s en­hance our co­coa in­dus­try or some­thing. We have oth­er things we can fo­cus on, and the oil is gone. We can’t de­pend on a non-re­new­able re­source, some­thing that is clear­ly not serv­ing us any­more. We can all see the po­ten­tial. We can all come up with so­lu­tions but no­body is lis­ten­ing to us. They are not do­ing any­thing dif­fer­ent.”

Kern, 35, skilled labour­er/busi­ness­man

“I wouldn’t vote be­cause I’m not see­ing any changes. They are not re­al­ly do­ing any­thing. First, to be­gin, em­ploy­ment is very hard be­cause you have no work, and when you man­age to get work, they talk to you how they want and do not pay you right. Every­thing is go­ing up, ex­cept your pay. The crime rate is crazy. Every­one walk­ing around frus­trat­ed.”

JC, 20

“No. I won’t be vot­ing. There is nev­er a true change. It feels like the same thing over and over, but dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios.”

Abi­jah, 20, bank work­er

“I’m not sure if I’ll vote. I’ve nev­er vot­ed be­fore. I feel there’s just a bat­tle be­tween the UNC and PNM, and it’s less about im­prov­ing the econ­o­my, and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Al­isha, 24, moth­er of two

“No, I won’t vote. I don’t know any­thing about lo­cal gov­ern­ment. I’ve nev­er vot­ed be­fore. I think pol­i­tics is non­sense. There needs to be some sort of change–100 per cent.”

Amy, 26, pub­lic ser­vant

“No. I don’t think I’ll be vot­ing. I’ve vot­ed be­fore, but I don’t think any­thing has changed and I don’t think un­til I see dif­fer­ent par­ties and stuff, I will be cast­ing a vote.”

UWI student Naveed Mohammed.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL

Naveed Mo­hammed, 19, UWI stu­dent

“I prob­a­bly would be will­ing to vote in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. The par­ties al­ways make promis­es that they don’t keep, and that nev­er re­al­ly changes. That doesn’t mo­ti­vate me to vote but at the end of the day, we need change in the coun­try, and over the last 10 years, there hasn’t been much change at all. It’s got­ten worse. I would vote to get some change in the coun­try. Yeah, I would most like­ly be will­ing to give a chance to a new par­ty.

“Most peo­ple I know–most friends–no­body is con­cerned about pol­i­tics. I would rather peo­ple use their heads when they are vot­ing and not use the race card. Use the facts–What has changed? What did the par­ties do? Think about that and not use race.”

Re­shawn, 23, pub­lic ser­vant

“No. I won’t be will­ing to vote. I’ve vot­ed al­ready. I’m be­ing re­al with you, my broth­er, every­one says pol­i­tics is cor­rupt, but cor­rup­tion is part of life now, you know. I ac­cept what is go­ing on. I don’t think vot­ing for a par­tic­u­lar par­ty will change any­thing. It will be the same be­cause we are in 2023 and noth­ing has changed as yet. And every­one says they are look­ing for a change, and change hasn’t hap­pened yet.”

Kim­ber­ly, 32

“No. I wouldn’t vote. I don’t re­al­ly vote on the whole. I wouldn’t do that. I don’t have time for pol­i­tics. I don’t care at all. The coun­try is in a mess. I don’t think they can re­al­ly help with that. To me, that starts from home. They could on­ly change so much. We need to change as a peo­ple.”

Sha­nia Joseph, 22, UWI stu­dent

“Yeah, I plan to vote in the up­com­ing elec­tions. I am dis­en­chant­ed with pol­i­tics as well. I’m im­par­tial to it, but I think it’s im­por­tant to vote to give your choice, be­cause then you would sit back and say they’re in pow­er and they’re not do­ing any­thing, but you didn’t do any­thing to try and help change that.”

Tye, 21, UWI stu­dent

“Lo­cal pol­i­tics is com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed from young peo­ple. Pol­i­tics is like a game, and you can’t hate the per­son. You have to learn the rules of the game and play ac­cord­ing­ly. It’s not for the peo­ple any­more. I think politi­cians should be good when nec­es­sary to be good, but they shouldn’t be evil un­nec­es­sar­i­ly in that they should make the most ra­tio­nal choice that’s most mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the peo­ple and the Gov­ern­ment, and every­one’s ben­e­fit holis­ti­cal­ly.

“I don’t think a new, youth-ori­ent­ed par­ty can nec­es­sar­i­ly over­come the sys­temic prob­lems be­cause the so­cial­i­sa­tion process is al­ready in­grained in­to peo­ple that it on­ly has two par­ties. That you ei­ther have to be a PNM or UNC be­cause there’s no oth­er op­tion. How­ev­er, for it to change, I think the cul­ture of the peo­ple will have to change.”