I would like to pref­ace this col­umn by say­ing I sup­port prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed “Stand your ground” laws and more firearms for de­serv­ing cit­i­zens.

Once con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to our so­ci­ety’s is­sues with men­tal ill­ness and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, I do be­lieve that arm­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens will de­ter se­ri­ous crime.

My own grand­moth­er, a busi­ness­woman named Vere Bha­gan, had cause to pull a gun on a ban­dit at least once to scare him off.

I strong­ly be­lieve that re­lax­ing the re­stric­tions on pep­per spray, tasers and firearms will al­so help pro­tect women from rapists and mur­der­ers.

That be­ing said, this ar­ti­cle at­tempts to pro­vide a sober analy­sis of the shifts in po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy that have oc­curred in 2025.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) was found­ed by Bas­deo Pan­day, a trade union­ist.

Trade union move­ments are gen­er­al­ly seen as left-lean­ing or so­cial­ist in their ad­vo­ca­cy for work­er’s rights.

The UNC’s Wikipedia page de­scribes it as a “cen­tre-left par­ty” with this cen­tre-left iden­ti­fi­ca­tion be­ing based on a ci­ta­tion from a text­book en­ti­tled Pro­files of Peo­ple in Pow­er: The World’s Gov­ern­ment Lead­ers by Roger East and Richard Thomas.

How­ev­er, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has, in my opin­ion, shift­ed the UNC more to the right, al­though strong trade union sup­port was in­volved in the UNC Gen­er­al Elec­tion vic­to­ry.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has open­ly iden­ti­fied with Re­pub­li­can pol­i­tics by ad­vo­cat­ing against “Far-left in­san­i­ty.”

There is in­deed a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Kam­la dou­bles down: End woke far-left ex­treme in­san­i­ty” pub­lished on Jan­u­ary 21, 2025, where Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cis­es for­mer US pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion’s poli­cies.

The UNC’s plat­form of gun rights and ad­vo­cat­ing self-de­fence seems in­ten­tion­al­ly aligned with Re­pub­li­can val­ues. This may re­sult in favourable treat­ment by the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, which would see an ide­o­log­i­cal al­ly in Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The UNC’s swing to the right may be the first time in T&T his­to­ry that pol­i­tics has moved be­yond the typ­i­cal racial di­vide to­wards be­ing more based on ide­ol­o­gy.

I man­aged to con­tact one mem­ber of the present Gov­ern­ment, Phillip Alexan­der, who dis­agreed with my as­sess­ment that the UNC is mov­ing to the right.

He stat­ed over What­sApp, “I can’t speak to that, I can say we are pro­gres­sive peo­ple-cen­tred.”

For­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan was asked to com­ment and said, “She (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) is not right-wing but lean­ing to­wards so­cial­ism. I am a Trump sup­port­er and I be­lieve in the Trumpian poli­cies.”

I in­ter­viewed at­tor­ney Aidan Chin Ale­ong, who is both a US and T&T cit­i­zen and a UNC ac­tivist and Con­ser­v­a­tive.

He was the on­ly one who took the po­si­tion that the UNC is lean­ing more to the right. He stat­ed, “From my per­spec­tive, it ap­pears, to its con­sid­er­able cred­it, that the UNC has moved to­wards a pop­ulist right turn to­wards com­mon sense gov­er­nance. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy when jux­ta­posed against the dis­as­trous, bor­der­line left­ist “plan­ta­tion so­cial­ism”—that is, so­cial­ism, di­rect­ed to­ward en­sur­ing the af­flu­ence of the elite on the backs of the tax­pay­ers—of the now thank­ful­ly de­part­ed “PN­Mista” (as I termed it) it­er­a­tion of the PNM un­der Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley.”

When asked to elab­o­rate on why he felt the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment seemed to be a “left­ist” par­ty, he said, “We saw an ill-ad­vised dal­liance with (Nico­las) Maduro, an­tag­o­nism to­wards tra­di­tion­al al­lies, re­stric­tions on free­doms, in­fil­tra­tion and in­ter­fer­ence in our in­sti­tu­tions, the in­tro­duc­tion of strange ide­olo­gies, and em­u­la­tions of the dele­te­ri­ous poli­cies of the De­mo­c­rat par­ty. These are anath­e­ma to the best in­ter­ests of the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens.

“Their ab­hor­rent fis­cal ap­proach served to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ben­e­fit the priv­i­leged elites whilst dec­i­mat­ing the mid­dle class.

“In con­trast to the pri­or regime’s in­ef­fec­tive ap­proach to­wards crime, the UNC is em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens to stand their ground.

“Our new PM em­bod­ies a com­pas­sion­ate and car­ing yet ju­di­cious­ly con­ser­v­a­tive ap­proach from which every­body wins.”

As we con­tin­ued our con­ver­sa­tion, Chin Ale­ong said, “The pur­pose of my dis­qui­si­tion is to dis­abuse us of the no­tion that the tra­di­tion­al un­der­stand­ing of the left and right po­lar­i­ty is still op­er­a­tive.

“To­day, the Trump right is dis­tinct from the Bush right, and the left of to­day is not what it once was; but is now a grotesque chimera of glob­al­ism, woke ide­olo­gies and an­ti-Chris­t­ian fer­vour.

“So, I can un­der­stand the ar­gu­ment that the UNC of to­day is not tra­di­tion­al­ly ‘right-wing’ but rather it has con­gru­ence with some of Trump’s poli­cies, where­as the PNM vis­i­bly aligned it­self with the De­moc­rats.

“The UNC’s num­bers among Chris­tians were strong, it means that they are see­ing what I am see­ing.”

The UNC is un­de­ni­ably im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies that re­sem­ble Trump/Re­pub­li­can talk­ing points.

How­ev­er, giv­en the unique na­ture of T&T pol­i­tics, a strict left-wing, right-wing lens is in­suf­fi­cient to en­cap­su­late the Re­alpoli­tik that pushed the UNC to vic­to­ry in 2025.

There is, how­ev­er, a glim­mer of hope that our pol­i­tics will one day be more about ide­ol­o­gy and less about race.