All eyes are on Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as she leads the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in coali­tion talks with small­er op­po­si­tion par­ties ahead of the Au­gust 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion.

In po­lit­i­cal al­liances, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence, as she has been a part of many such arrange­ments. Her most sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess to date has been as leader of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) coali­tion gov­ern­ment from 2010 to 2015, shat­ter­ing the po­lit­i­cal glass ceil­ing to be­come T&T’s first fe­male prime min­is­ter.

But a coali­tion was al­so the ba­sis of her first for­ay in­to pol­i­tics in 1987 as a Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) al­der­man in the St Patrick Coun­ty Coun­cil.

As its name in­di­cat­ed, the NAR was an al­liance of var­i­ous par­ties — the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion (ONR), the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF), the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress (DAC) and the Tapia House Move­ment — who joined forces in 1986 to de­liv­er the first and most dev­as­tat­ing elec­toral de­feat ever in­flict­ed on the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Her sec­ond taste of coali­tion pol­i­tics was in 1995, when then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning called an ear­ly elec­tion that end­ed in a 17-17 tie be­tween the PNM and UNC. A coali­tion with the NAR gave po­lit­i­cal pow­er to the Bas­deo Pan­day-led par­ty and Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar got her first stint as a Cab­i­net min­is­ter.

Then came the PP, a coali­tion of the UNC, Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) and the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC), for­malised just a few months af­ter Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar took over as the UNC leader.

How­ev­er, the ear­ly de­par­ture of the MSJ from that arrange­ment was among the frac­tures that de­vel­oped dur­ing the PP’s five-year term.

Years ear­li­er, the split in the NAR was even more dra­mat­ic. When Mr Pan­day was ex­pelled from the par­ty in 1988, oth­er for­mer ULF mem­bers left with him. They even­tu­al­ly formed the UNC, the par­ty the Op­po­si­tion Leader now seeks to place in­to yet an­oth­er coali­tion arrange­ment.

Once again, a coali­tion is sought for the sin­gle pur­pose of de­feat­ing the PNM.

Be­yond that, how­ev­er, there is an even big­ger chal­lenge for Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, even with all ex­pe­ri­ence in coali­tion pol­i­tics T&T style — iron­ing out the ide­o­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal dif­fer­ences that have ham­pered pre­vi­ous al­liances.

At the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el, with the added com­pli­ca­tion of some el­e­ments of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the mix, there will have to be some clear rules of en­gage­ment and prop­er­ly de­fined sys­tems for shar­ing pow­er.

There are al­so po­ten­tial stum­bling blocks in terms of in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships. Forg­ing pro­duc­tive and smooth work­ing re­la­tion­ships with the oth­er par­ty lead­ers might be eas­i­er said than done giv­en past his­to­ries.

But there is one his­tor­i­cal fact that must be up­per­most for Mrs Per­sad-Biss­esar, whose UNC has man­aged on­ly some ra­zor-thin mar­gins and vir­tu­al ties with the PNM in the last two lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. She un­der­stands that her par­ty’s best chance for out­right vic­to­ry on Au­gust 14 re­quires a unit­ed front with oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties op­posed to the PNM.

Whether she ac­com­plish­es that show of force re­mains to be seen. The out­comes this time around are bound to in­flu­ence the big­ger elec­toral prize that looms in the not-too-dis­tance fu­ture.