Election Pre-Mortem, 2001
It has taken us far too long to get to this point where tomorrow is polling day and we will be free of the inanities, obscenities, and irrelevancies that have assaulted our minds and souls this premature election season. Time always moves too slowly when you are trapped in anything, but particularly when the trap is a circle of incessant voices spouting nonsense at you, and your protestations are meaningless. Tomorrow, mercifully, it ends, and we will elect into parliament people who have not really conversed with us, and therefore have not been guided by us, on the issues that really matter.
The three high-profile parties in Trinidad - UNC, PNM, and Team Unity - all think there are two issues, though each identifies them differently. The UNC think the issues are their performance VS PNM non-performance and neemakharamism on the party of Team Unity. The PNM think that they are UNC corruption and the PNM's solid record of performance over the years, most of it, including the entire record of the Manning administration, uncorrupt and evenhanded. Team Unity think they are UNC corruption and theft of government under the UNC by the exploitative parasitic oligarchy.
I use 'issue' here in the sense of 'concern that will make constituencies continue to vote or not vote as they have traditionally done or that will make them change their pattern of voting'. The constituencies (in Trinidad) are four and they are, characteristically, Voting Indo-Trinidadians, Voting Afro-Trinbagonians, Voting Minority Trinidadians (who include French Creole Trinidadians and Trinidadians of mixed ethnicity), and Non-voting Trinidadians (of whatever ethnicity). They are blocks of voters/non-voters, with a clear monolithic pattern of voting, though, of course, some of their constituents break the pattern by voting differently from the blocks as wholes.
Indo-Trinidadians vote for the UNC and Afro-Trinbagonians for the PNM, but Minority Trinidadians vote for either party, depending on their perception of which party is likely to cater better to their (mostly socio-economic) needs and interests. In other words, voting in Trinidad is essentially an ethnic matter, though there is voting that rises above ethnicity to be influenced by higher concerns such as quality of democracy, economic justice, and morality in public affairs.
Tobago is a case by itself. There, there is only one ethnic group of voting importance - Africans, so there isn't the ethnic divide that retards development in Trinidad. Rather, the divide is between the PNM and NAR constituencies, which is to say, between Williams' and Robinson's forces. Traditionally, Williams' forces have stood for a unitarism that excluded Tobagonian self-governance while Robinson's forces have pushed for a decentralised nationalism.
Things are somewhat different today, however. Unitarism and decentralisation are still very much alive, but the Tobago PNM has succeeded in making the electorate see it as just as interested like the NAR in Tobagonian self-governance, albeit within the familiar unitary framework. And the NAR has been weakened, if not overcome, by perceptions of one-man-ship, corruption and financial adventurism, by loss of considerable intellectual capital, and by the fragility of its party structure in both Tobago and Trinidad. The PNM, the NAR, and the UNC are contesting these elections in Tobago, and the issues are: the PNM ones of UNC/NAR corruption and good management of NAR-created debt and administrative anomalies; the NAR ones of PNM discrimation against NAR supporters and superior NAR ability to broker the shape of government in the event of a PNM-UNC deadlock in Trinidad; and the UNC ones of UNC performance and the Tobago PNM's destruction of NAR-executed Tobagonian development.
In Trinidad, voting will essentially be by ethnic identification, i.e., Indo-Trinidadians will as a constituency vote UNC and Afro-Trinidadians will as a constituency vote PNM. In Tobago, voters will be split between PNM and NAR in the traditional way, but, in addition, they will be swayed by the issues. That is, the swing to the PNM on the basis of issues that occurred in the THA elections could hold or voters could swing back to the NAR. The UNC is out of the picture for two reasons: 1) it has no traditional base, and 2) its performance mantra was rejected out of hand the last time around, and one year is too little time, I suggest, for it to turn enough voters this time.
In the context of ethnic voting, the most important question in respect of Trinidad is: Will there be a swing one way or the other on the basis of the issues? More pointedly, will enough Indo-Trinidadians swing to the PNM, or enough Afro-Trinidadians to the UNC? Will the minority constituencies choose the PNM, or the UNC? Will enough of the non-voting Trinidadians be motivated by the issues to swing from not voting to voting mostly for one of the parties, and which party will it be? Will Team Unity knock off huge chunks from the UNC Indo-Trinidadian monolith to push the UNC out of government?
We do not know the answers to these questions, of course, but the state of affairs seems to favour a swing in favour of the PNM. The rationale is simple. The elections were called because the UNC government collapsed, and the collapse was due to serious internal divisions, with the (now) Team Unity railing against non-action by Basdeo Panday on UNC corruption and takeover of the party by 'the parasitic oligarchy'. The electorate is called upon to participate in elections involving millions of dollars in expenditure of state money a mere twelve months after statutory general elections. All because of the UNC.
The problem is definitely not PNM non-performance: they have not been in power these last six fractious years; rather, it is most definitely the UNC for serious internal disorder and a plethora of corruption scandals. Any swing, therefore, is likely to be, if the normal operations of reason prevail, to the PNM in reaction, not to PNM non-performance - which must be meaningless in context! - but to the conditions that caused the UNC to fall.
But let's not put so much faith in the operations of reason. Where politics in this country is concerned, reason is routinely a casualty of the operations of blind ethnic loyalty and disenchantment with the moral instability of politicians of every hue.
But even if reason were to prevail and the UNC paid the price for what it has put us through, we would not be better off where it really matters. What really matters or should matter is whether we will have a democracy where no king reigns; where communities are represented in parliament-like institutions by persons they, and not the king or his party, choose; where there is a constitution, in both text and popular understanding, that makes communities, and not individuals, powerful; and where the different communities negotiate their advancement, not the basis of primal ethnicity, but on issues common to them, such as quality of democracy, economic justice, and morality in public affairs.
The inane, obscene and irrelevant noises we were subjected to on the hustings were top-down messages and in no way horizontal conversations between party and people. And they barely touched on the issues that matter.
After December 10, there'll still be a great deal of grief, even among supporters of the winning party (if there's one!).
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