Pe­ter Bal­roop

ANSA McAL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine con­duct­ed a na­tion­wide sur­vey for the Sun­day Guardian be­tween Ju­ly 29 to Au­gust 2 to as­sess pop­u­lar opin­ion on a num­ber of ma­jor is­sues, in­clud­ing pol­i­tics. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive ran­dom sam­ple of 503 re­spon­dents com­prised peo­ple 18 years and over with 37per cent Afro-Trinida­di­ans, 42 per cent In­do-Trinida­di­ans and 21 per cent Mixed peo­ple. The sam­ple con­sist­ed of 50 per cent males.

With­in the sam­ple, there were 30 per cent Ro­man Catholics, 24 per cent Hin­dus, sev­en per cent Mus­lims, 30 per cent oth­er Chris­t­ian groups and nine per cent of uniden­ti­fied re­li­gious per­sua­sions. Re­spon­dents were se­lect­ed us­ing the Ran­dom Dig­it Di­al­ing Method. The mar­gin of er­ror is plus or mi­nus four per cent. This poll was su­per­vised by Dr Derek Chadee, Man­ag­er, ANSA McAL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre and Se­nior Lec­tur­er, De­part­ment of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

The rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is on easy street should a snap gen­er­al elec­tion be called, do­ing hand­springs in the lead while ri­vals Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) toil in their wake. The irony is, an over­whelm­ing num­ber of Ansa McAl poll re­spon­dents who say they can't see an­oth­er elec­tion win­ner bar the PNM, are high­ly crit­i­cal of the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. A whop­ping 57 per cent of re­spon­dents con­demned Man­ning. In par­tic­u­lar, they slammed his ap­par­ent bla­tant fail­ure to recog­nise that char­i­ty be­gins at home.

The poll of 503 re­spon­dents aged 18 and over threw up the fact that 66 per cent be­lieved, that were a gen­er­al elec­tion to be held to­day, the PNM would win. Just eight per cent of the re­spon­dents felt the COP was in with a shout, and on­ly four per cent tipped the UNC to re­turn to the 1995-2001 days of glo­ry.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, five per cent of the re­spon­dents–more women than men, and more than those sup­port­ing UNC–pre­ferred to sit on the fence, say­ing they had no pref­er­ence for any of the three par­ties. The 'dou­glas' among us were count­ed as be­ing the most sup­port­ive of the PNM, 71 per cent of them giv­ing the PNM an elec­tion thumbs-up. Some 68 per cent of re­spon­dents of African de­scent plumbed for the PNM, while 61 per cent of the In­do-Trinida­di­ans per­ceived the rul­ing par­ty as more than like­ly to re­tain its grip on po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

Pro-PNM re­spon­dents ar­gued that the par­ty seemed to have the most uni­ty as well as be­ing the best or­gan­ised, while crit­ics of the UNC in­sist­ed to do bet­ter the par­ty need­ed to "get their act to­geth­er" and that there was too much fight­ing among par­ty hi­er­ar­chy. Those who saw COP in the as­cen­dan­cy be­lieved the vot­ers might just em­brace change and take a fling with a new par­ty, much as they did with the NAR in 1986; in fact, if they be­lieve the COP would in­deed bring a breath of fresh air to T&T pol­i­tics.

Low rat­ing

A fly was thrown in­to the oint­ment, how­ev­er, when the poll­sters threw out the loaded ques­tion: How would you rate the Prime Min­is­ter's per­for­mance to date? Just three per cent of re­spon­dents rat­ed Patrick Man­ning's sev­en-and-a-half years in the dri­ver's seat as an ex­cel­lent per­for­mance; 11 per cent felt he was good at the job; 29 per cent an­swered "fair." But a whop­ping 32 per cent lam­bast­ed Man­ning for a "poor" job as Prime Min­is­ter while a fur­ther 25 per cent would cast him in­to the po­lit­i­cal ceme­tery for putting down an "ex­treme­ly poor" per­for­mance run­ning the po­lit­i­cal af­fairs of the coun­try.

The litany of an­ti-Man­ning crit­i­cism, as de­tailed in the poll, in­cludes:

�2 He needs to do more for the coun­try;

�2 The coun­try is in a mess;

�2 He is not suc­cess­ful in deal­ing with the re­al is­sues of the coun­try;

�2 He is not do­ing any­thing to help cit­i­zens of the coun­try;

�2 He pays more at­ten­tion to oth­er Caribbean coun­tries rather than his own;

�2 Mon­ey is not be­ing spent in the right ar­eas.

'Man­ning the best since 1962'

Re­spon­dents who be­lieved Man­ning had been do­ing a good or fair job high­light­ed what they felt he had been do­ing for the poor, as well as el­e­vat­ing the sta­tus of T&T in in­ter­na­tion­al eyes. They say he is best of the five Prime Min­is­ters T&T has seen since 1962, but in the same breath, add that he needs to put down a lot more work in the area of curb­ing crime.

Al­so, they ob­serve, many promis­es made by the Man­ning Gov­ern­ment have not been kept and the Trea­sury was be­ing sub­ject­ed to a spend­ing spree. In terms of eth­nic­i­ty, 75 per cent of In­do-Trinida­di­an re­spon­dents, 47 per cent Mixed and 42 per cent Afro-Trinida­di­ans watched Man­ning with beady eyes, ac­cord­ing to the poll. A to­tal of 59 per cent of men, com­pared to 55 per cent of fe­male re­spon­dents looked un­favourably on Man­ning's per­for­mance.

Pan­day worse off

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day fared even worse than Man­ning, 41 per cent of re­spon­dents rat­ing his per­for­mance in of­fice as poor, while 31 per cent felt it was ex­treme­ly poor. Just two per cent of re­spon­dents were over the moon about Pan­day's per­for­mance, rat­ing it as ex­cel­lent; sev­en per cent saw it as good; while19 per cent put a "fair" tag on the 76-year-old who is be­ing be­dev­illed by the frac­tious Ram­jack fac­tion of the par­ty.He is seen as over­see­ing too much par­ty in-fight­ing and not even be­ing able to com­mand his troops in Par­lia­ment with the same aplomb as be­fore. On whether Pan­day is an ob­sta­cle to an al­liance be­tween the COP and the UNC, it seemed that, if any­thing, based on the poll, Pan­day is mak­ing more and more po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies as the days go by.

A to­tal of 62 per cent of re­spon­dents slammed Pan­day as an al­liance stum­bling block, while 17 per cent could not form a co­her­ent opin­ion. In terms of eth­nic­i­ty, 60-some­thing per cent of Mixed, In­do-Trinida­di­an and Afro-Trinida­di­an re­spon­dents made Pan­day a whip­ping boy. Those who saw him as a stum­bling block felt UNC need­ed new blood in the par­ty to off­set the cur­rent an­i­mos­i­ty among the hi­er­ar­chy. But Pan­day's stout sup­port­ers point to the COP's pres­ence as an ob­sta­cle in it­self to the up­ward surge of the UNC. They are op­ti­mistic that the cur­rent dif­fer­ences will be sort­ed out and the man who they say start­ed the UNC "from scratch" would re­turn to his glo­ry days.

Peo­ple's cry

The litany of an­ti-Man­ning crit­i­cism, as de­tailed in the poll, in­cludes:

�2 He needs to do more for the coun­try;

�2 The coun­try is in a mess;

�2 He is not suc­cess­ful in deal­ing with the re­al is­sues of the coun­try;

�2 He is not do­ing any­thing to help cit­i­zens of the coun­try;

�2 He pays more at­ten­tion to oth­er Caribbean coun­tries rather than his own;

�2 Mon­ey is not be­ing spent in the right ar­eas.