Morning, T&T. Well, the election is over. Things can now go back to normal; not like that’s anything to be thrilled about. Notice how I didn’t include the word ‘good’ in that greeting, because I doubt that applies to everyone today. In light of last night’s results, some of the population will be happy; others, unfortunately, won’t be so happy.
Of course, since I wrote and submitted this column before polling day, it doesn’t possess any insight as to which party or persons would emerge as the winner. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a “gut instinct” as to how things were going to turn out. I’ll save that speculation till the end and leave it up to fate to determine whether I guessed wrong or right. But before we get there, let’s discuss a couple of challenges that were evident going into this election and how they may have influenced its outcome.
Winners and losers aside, one of the more interesting things to take note of is the turnout of registered voters.
In the last general election, some 700,000 votes were cast, equal to approximately 65 per cent of the electorate. While this is a decrease—albeit a small one—from 69 per cent in 2010, there has been an increase in the number of voters from 2007, which, at the time, was about 650,000. This may be a moot point, especially since low voter participation is a common problem in contemporary democracies, T&T being no exception. That being said, I suspect yesterday’s turnout was particularly low. Now, it’s easy to rationalise that as an effect of COVID-19, with Trinbagonians either choosing to avoid the risk of exposure to the virus or just not willing to put up with the extra safety precautions and the long wait times at polling stations.
However, that may have just been a convenient excuse, one that covers up the underlying sentiment of dissatisfaction amongst a sizeable portion of the electorate. In the months leading up to the election, several polls, the results of which were published by the Guardian, showed an increase in the number of voters who had no interest in the elections or who won. One poll conducted by Louis Bertrand, put that figure at around 40 per cent. When you factor in that support for the PNM and UNC amount to around 30 per cent each, it seems to fit in mathematically with the before-mentioned turnout percentage. But what that poll also revealed was that close to 75 per cent of the respondents believed that the country either hasn’t changed or has gotten worse over the past five years. That translates to a lack of motivation to take part in the democratic process, which, given the current circumstances, would be understandable.
Granted, while such polls are reflective of only a small sample of the population, both parties may have been fully aware that they couldn’t count on these “migratory” voters to swing the election in their favour.
Which means the victor was probably the party that got the most of its supporters out to vote. This would also explain why, despite having a short campaign period, things got very nasty very quickly. Every dirty trick in the book was utilised—from the revealing of a supposed “sex tape”, to resorting to corrupt campaign practices, to even making an issue out of a filing technicality with the Election and Boundaries Commission. And this was on top of the tried and true accusations of racism, a tactic that both parties willingly and repeatedly indulged in. The aim here may have been to simply rile up their support base to ensure that, even if the turnout of undecided or disenchanted voters was abysmally low, they could still rely on that core of “till ah ded” voters. If that be the case, we might have just ended up with a government that was selected by a minority percentage of the electorate.
If such was the outcome, it should be no surprise. And while the circumstances of COVID-19 might have played a part, this is also the result of that before-mentioned growing political dissatisfaction. In campaigning, the PNM’s focus wasn’t so much on exulting its tenure of the last five years, but the failings of the UNC the five years before; the UNC did the same thing, just in reverse. The reality is that things haven’t gotten better in the combined ten years between them. And this was despite having new party leaders who swore that their administrations would be different. Instead, we just got more of the same.
So who did I think won the election? Honestly, I don’t think it matters. I’m sure that whatever promises were made have already been forgotten. And nothing with change —crime will remain high, the economy will remain low, and party financiers will make money either way. I also suspect the last month will be remembered as a mere footnote in our political history, made interesting only by the fact that it took place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Whether or not we exchanged governments I don’t see the point in celebrating. Because regardless of who won the election—it’s we, the people, who lost.