As the statutory date for general elections draws near, the last election having been held in May of 2010, the political climate in Trinidad & Tobago seems to be heating up. For some time now, both of the main parties, the ruling Peoples Partnership (a coalition dominated by the United National Congress (UNC)) and the Peoples National Movement (PNM) have been attempting a variety of parliamentary manoeuvres, seeking to demonstrate that one is less fit that the other to hold the reins of government over the next period. And the game seemed to have come to a head last week when the government sought to push through a motion of no confidence in the leader of the PNM opposition, Dr Keith Rowley.
The government manoeuvre has appeared as a somewhat strange initiative, since the usual use of a motion of no confidence would come from the opposition against the government. But this, in reality, appears to be following a trend of increasing party-political intensity as general elections, due to be held about May of this year, approach.
It will be recalled that, in the face of what appeared to be increasing difficulty for Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s PNM government, he had called a general election in 2010, only three years after his party had won 26 seats to the UNC’s 15, an act that indicated that he felt the tide to be turning against his party.
The People’s Partnership governing coalition has now run almost the full period of its constitutional tenure, and clearly Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her colleagues decided that a no-confidence vote against Rowley personally, which the government would naturally win, was the best way to rally her troops again, especially as morale in the coalition has been proving more and more shaky. The UNC’s main partner, the Congress of the People (COP), seems to have been consistently losing its electoral strength, and the UNC, with the virtual fading away of Dr Winston Dookeran the founder of the COP, has decided that it will have to shoulder, on its own, the main burden of fighting and winning the coming elections.
In addition, one of the other central figures of the People’s Partnership coalition, the football management ace Jack Warner, who played a strategic role in harnessing the various strands of the People’s Partnership coalition before the last election, is no longer on the side of the PP, having lost much credibility following the various FIFA revelations. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar obviously came to be persuaded that he was no longer an asset, but rather, was likely to be a weakening element in the general elections.
The PP appears, therefore, to have been trying as a major stratagem, among other things, to focus on Rowley, a native of Tobago, as not having that national empathy, support and leader-worship among the PNM supporters that his predecessors have had, the island of Trinidad being, of course, the dominant political entity in electoral terms. So, as the elections have drawn nearer, the PP obviously decided to up the ante against Rowley by the strange stratagem of a government motion of no confidence against the leader of the opposition, a move that prompted the opposition to boycott the sitting of parliament.
What appears, however, to have developed, if reports and sentiments in the major Trinidad press are to be accepted as credible, is a certain popular upset and hostility to what has amounted to be a prolonged personal attack on Rowley and his various family relationships by one of the PP parliamentarians (also from Tobago). And it would appear that her accusations against Rowley were indeed well planned.
It appears, in the face of this parliamentary charade, that the PNM leadership has been satisfied to let condemnation develop from non-PNM sources in the general community, with hints that an element of racialism is at the base of the PP’s attack. For from past performance over the present electoral term of the PP, it would appear that the PNM has decided to continue to focus, instead, on its traditional allegations of persistent PP government corruption and ministerial favouritism towards substantial party supporters, hoping, no doubt, that this theme will be more attractive to the broad African-origin middle class of the country that the PNM has always depended on for substantial support.
In the face of what appears to be widespread negative press and commentator expression against the PP’s parliamentary strategy, both parties will probably be seeking evidence as to whether, given the now close proximity of the election, the negative drums of those hostile to the PP’s anti-Rowley strategy will have sufficient time to consolidate themselves within the electorate; or whether the electorate will take the more traditional view of examining the performances of the two major parties over the current electoral term, at a time of relative prosperity, with the wind blowing in favour of the presiding government.
Or yet again, whether PNM support, along with that of normally non-party committed citizens of whatever racial origins, who have become agitated against what seem to be unorthodox PP attacks against the PNM leader, and have been persuaded by his party’s constant drum-beating and warnings about increasing levels of corruption, will turn the tide in favour of the PNM.
