The win­ner of the gen­er­al elec­tion 2020 must be able to nav­i­gate the po­lit­i­cal pit­falls of spite, en­vy, and,of course, be­ing able to con­vince the elec­torate that you can sup­ply every sin­gle whim and fan­cy, phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly pos­si­ble. A tall or­der? Not re­al­ly. True sup­port­ers will be sat­is­fied with less than per­fect, just be­ing close will do.

The two ma­jor par­ties, the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) will soon be tied in their usu­al five year mor­tal com­bat. I have no time to mince words. No time to stroke third par­ty egos. With Au­gust 10, loom­ing, all oth­er small par­ties re­main just win­dow dress­ing. The truth hurts hor­ri­bly. But the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has the­o­ret­i­cal­ly emas­cu­lat­ed third par­ty pol­i­tics. No coali­tion of small en­ti­ties can present­ly of­fer the po­lit­i­cal com­fort of be­ing able to deal with the pan­dem­ic and the in­escapable fi­nan­cial/eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion..

Both PNM/UNC, with thou­sands of sup­port­ers have to al­leged­ly nav­i­gate gross in­ter­nal is­sues of spite and en­vy. Which im­por­tant mem­ber have you ig­nored in the pre­vi­ous five years? Who did you not choose to run again? Will these peo­ple en­cour­age their per­son­al sup­port base to swing away? Who did you not in­clude in the giv­ing po­si­tions of en­vy in state cor­po­ra­tions ? Who did you not al­low with­in the in­ner cir­cle? It is my per­son­al, un­paid, un­so­licit­ed view that the PNM, more so than the UNC, has a his­to­ry of be­ing stabbed in the po­lit­i­cal back by pre­vi­ous mem­bers who wished for in­ter­nal high recog­ni­tion but got ig­nored. The UNC is more like­ly to for­give and for­get the past. Across a PNM/UNC spec­trum that in­cludes pre­vi­ous fi­nance min­is­ters, am­bas­sadors, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts, and pro­lif­ic po­lit­i­cal let­ter writ­ers, you can feel the per­pet­u­al angst. This pal­pa­ble spite and en­vy is par­tic­u­lar­ly cor­ro­sive to the PNM who stead­fast­ly in­tend to win or lose alone.

Our T&T win­ner takes all West­min­ster style pol­i­tics means just that. The 2020 polls show PNM/UNC sta­tis­ti­cal­ly lev­el. I dis­be­lieve this poll. as a na­tion, we say what­ev­er comes to our heads when ques­tioned. The poll says a pletho­ra of fence sit­ters and per­sons un­will­ing to even vote is be­ing ev­i­denced. Po­lit­i­cal Cra­paud says pull the oth­er leg.

The sup­port bases of the PNM/UNC re­main in­tact. Promise them any­thing rea­son­ably be­liev­able and they will con­tin­ue to love you.

And re­mem­ber, im­age is every­thing in T&T pol­i­tics and win­ner takes all, and some­times more.

Lynette Joseph

Diego Mar­tin

Via email