Rewind to 1981. There was an alliance then too with the ULF, Tapia and the DAC. And the arrogant new kid on the block, wanted nothing to do with the likes of Basdeo Panday, Lloyd Best and A.N.R. Robinson. Karl Hudsop Phillips and his ONR were going to change the face of national politics and end the PNM's reign.
The result of that election was predictable as is the forthcoming one, given the present state of affairs.
There were some signficant differences between then and now, which means there is still a quickly declining window of opportunity for opposition politicians to determine once and for all if they want to remove the PNM or remain stuck in the quicksand of political pettiness.
In 1981 the politics was different. George Chambers had just inherited the PNM following the demise of the party's founder, Dr Eric Williams. Chambers had little time to put his own stamp on anything and continued with the Williams agenda. A whole generation had known no other party in government and people were not yet ready to change that.
Also, when Chambers called the election the nation was still mourning the death a man who was loved even by those who disagreed with his politics. Chambers guided the PNM back to Whitehall on a landslide, primarily because of a sympathy vote.
What was also signficant that year was that the ONR did better than the Alliance but ended without a single seat. Chambers was almost a soothsayer when he declared in Woodford Square, "They are too wicked. Not a damn seat for them."
The Alliance experiment that year didn't work. Each party kept its identity and didn't run under a single symbol. Robinson won his two Tobago seats, Best and Tapia remained irrelevant and Basdeo Panday went back to Parliament with his traditional ULF seats.
The moral of the story then as it is now: splintering the opposition returns the government to office.
And that brings us back to where we are 26 years later in 2007.
Once again we have an Alliance. And once again we have a new party "full of sound and fury" arguing that its will change things with its "new" politics. The fundamental difference this time is that the COP is led by a man who was disenchanted with the UNC, unlike Hudson Phillips, who was a former PNM Attorney General. Winston Dookeran is fishing in the opposition pond; Hudson Phillips was in the government's.
This brings up a critical part in the 2007 political equation.
Dookeran and the COP have claimed that they have majority support among those who oppose the PNM. In translation that means the COP believes it can win the opposition constituencies. But there's little evidence of that.
The UNC has kept its base, in spite of the witch hunt by the PNM that has not really left anyone burning at the stakes.
Over the years from 1995 to 2002 the UNC vote increased, with a peak in 2000 of more than 307,000, accounting for more than 50 per cent of the popular vote. It dipped in the next election, then went up again, ending with a net gain over 1995 by the time it was pushed out of office by Robinson on Christmas eve 2001.
So the real issue that makes 2007 so critically different from 1981 is that the COP is courting votes from the opposition constituencies while leaving PNM strongholds alone. The bulk of ONR's 90,000 votes in 1981 came from disenchanted PNM supporters. Still the party lost every seat.
The COP, therefore, by using this strategy of facing the polls alone, is engineering a PNM victory by splintering the vote in opposition constituencies to allow the strong possibility of the PNM winning in some areas with a minority vote.
What is also different this time is that none of the frontline leaders in the present Alliance, except Basdeo Panday, has true political clout. And the Alliance is making the same fundamental mistake of 1981 by not declaring who is its leader.
Politics in Trinidad and Tobago is based on allegiances more than policy. So it really comes down to who's the leader. Williams, Robinson, Manning and Panday have had strong, dedicated followings (Chambers didn't, but won on the strength of Williams). People want to identify the leader who will take them to government BEFORE they make that choice.
That was a principal fault in the 1981 Alliance. They fixed the problem five years leader when Panday handed the leadership of the NAR to Robinson. But the Alliance is back to collective leadership, creating a confused electorate.
And if the COP is counting on cutting a new political path it should do the analysis first and it will see that it has to rethink its position if it is serious about beating the PNM.
Loyalty dies hard. Eric Williams used to say that he could put a crapaud in his strongholds and win. He was right. Ask Hulsie Bhaggan why Chaguanas rejected her or Rupert Griffith what really happened in Arima. They were seen as traitors to their respective parties; people voted for the party, seeing them only as symbols of the organization.
Dookeran must know that. He's no idiot. So that raises the most important question of the day: what is the COP's real agenda? Is it seeing the big picture or is it happy with giving Manning a constitutional majority?
Manning must be the happiest man in the land.
He has created the best opportunity for the opposition to boot him out of office, but the opposition is engaged in turf wars and pettiness. And at the end of the day, there will be plenty of finger-pointing.
But the true losers will be the people who would have every reason to say their leaders failed them - again.
Jai Parasram | Toronto, July 2007
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