For as long as po­lit­i­cal sys­tems have ex­ist­ed in this coun­try, par­ties have op­er­at­ed along racial lines.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), the par­ty that cur­rent­ly holds the reins of pow­er, has had an Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian base through­out its 70-year his­to­ry, while the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and its pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tions—the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP) and the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF)—has had sol­id sup­port from In­do-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.

Al­though T&T is of­ten de­scribed as a cos­mopoli­tan so­ci­ety, the truth is that any sem­blance of peace­ful co­ex­is­tence is frag­ile, due in part to the de­lib­er­ate di­vide and rule sys­tem by which past colo­nial rulers kept con­trol over this coun­try’s two main eth­nic groups.

For a fleet­ing mo­ment in the 1980s, it looked like T&T could achieve re­al uni­ty when the gen­uine­ly mul­ti-eth­nic Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR), a par­ty formed from a merg­er of var­i­ous op­po­si­tion groups, gained pow­er. How­ev­er, that par­ty broke apart along eth­nic lines ear­ly in its on­ly term in of­fice and steadi­ly di­min­ished as a po­lit­i­cal force af­ter that. Since then, while the main po­lit­i­cal par­ties have field­ed racial­ly di­verse elec­tion slates, their cam­paigns are of­ten taint­ed by rhetoric and pos­tur­ing that are eth­ni­cal­ly re­pres­sive, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and deeply di­vi­sive.

This coun­try has so far avoid­ed a full erup­tion of eth­ni­cal­ly dri­ven po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence, but we still face con­se­quences from an elec­torate that casts bal­lots based on tribe rather than is­sues.

Even out­side of elec­tion sea­sons, par­ties get deeply mired in race and there are some con­tro­ver­sial ex­am­ples in the re­cent past

The PNM came in for wide­spread crit­i­cism when, at a Fam­i­ly Day event in Au­gust 2018, a con­stituen­cy group did a skit in which a woman had her yel­low sari tak­en off by men in go­ril­la suits to ex­pose a red un­der­gar­ment. The racist and misog­y­nis­tic over­tones of that dis­play prompt­ed an out­cry from op­po­si­tion and oth­er groups

Not to be out­done, at a UNC po­lit­i­cal meet­ing the fol­low­ing month, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stirred up more racial ten­sions when she called Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an “Oreo.”

The wretched state of race re­la­tions in T&T was ac­cu­rate­ly summed up by Pro­fes­sor Rho­da Red­dock, of the UN Com­mit­tee on the Elim­i­na­tion of Dis­crim­i­na­tion Against Women, in her con­tri­bu­tion to a vir­tu­al sym­po­sium host­ed by the Port-of-Spain Arch­dio­cese in Au­gust 2020, when she said: “We un­der­stand al­most every­thing through the prism of race. Race be­comes an ex­pla­na­tion for all fail­ure, achieve­ment, eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions, mar­riage de­ci­sions, ed­u­ca­tion de­ci­sions, em­ploy­ment de­ci­sions and, of course, vot­ing de­ci­sions.”

Sad­ly, T&T’s politi­cians seem in­ca­pable of break­ing the cy­cle of mis­trust be­tween In­di­ans and Africans, in which each sus­pects the oth­er of want­i­ng to “take over” the coun­try. If any­thing, that eth­nic dis­cord is fre­quent­ly ex­ploit­ed to score po­lit­i­cal points.

The UNC leader has again skid­ded down the slip­pery slope of race-bait­ing and stereo­typ­ing with her com­ment about an­ces­tral and slave names, of­fend­ing and alien­at­ing a huge seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion she as­pires to once again lead. As a for­mer prime min­is­ter, she should have known bet­ter.

T&T needs lead­ers ca­pa­ble of bridg­ing the eth­nic and cul­tur­al di­vide to build a stronger na­tion but such peo­ple do not seem to ex­ist in our frac­tured po­lit­i­cal are­na.