Frankly, it must be quite tir­ing for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, even the sup­port­ers of the par­ties in­volved in the in­tend­ed coali­tion of par­ties un­der the ban­ner of the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), to ex­pe­ri­ence an­oth­er as­so­ci­a­tion of par­ties de­void of sub­stance.

Sure­ly, there is rea­son to dis­miss the rul­ing par­ty for its fail­ures to bring re­lief to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty from the dead­ly and stul­ti­fy­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty, and so too its in­abil­i­ty to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for the growth of the non-en­er­gy econ­o­my. How­ev­er, it is the in­ca­pac­i­ty of the op­po­si­tion forces to present an at­trac­tive and sol­id enough pro­gramme for the elec­torate to have an al­ter­na­tive to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment which mys­ti­fies and dis­turbs.

With the gen­er­al elec­tion con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due next year, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounces a coali­tion with what Lloyd Best used to call a “pick-up side.” Best likened this to Sun­day morn­ing crick­et in the Queen’s’Park Sa­van­nah in the 1960s, a fore­run­ner to the ab­bre­vi­at­ed T20/T10 for­mats of the present. Then, a team short of play­ers will hail out to any passer­by and say to the ef­fect, “Come join us; how yuh does bat or bowl?” “Nei­ther,” may be the re­ply. “That’s ok, open the bat­ting for we; bowl­ing same thing.”

To­day, op­po­si­tion par­ties have con­tin­u­al­ly en­gaged in the same kind of non­sen­si­cal and non-vi­able al­liances, elec­tion af­ter elec­tion and when elect­ed to gov­ern­ment or placed on the op­po­si­tion bench­es in the Par­lia­ment, a place of great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, they frac­ture in­to their con­stituent el­e­ments al­most be­fore they have tak­en the oath of of­fice.

If there was rhyme and rea­son for the 1986 com­ing to­geth­er un­der the ban­ner of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion with a group of lead­ers who could be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, there has been the ab­sence of a ba­sis for this cur­rent coali­tion.

It must be said be­cause it is the truth, that the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has been Op­po­si­tion Leader and prime min­is­ter in her time in pub­lic of­fice, has failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly to in­sti­tu­tion­alise and make co­he­sive with a track record of suc­cess, her par­ty and its coali­tion part­ners.

In 2010, with a group of elect­ed per­sons who on pa­per could have been reck­oned to have a mea­sure of ex­pe­ri­ence in pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment, with­in a cou­ple months the fault lines ap­peared and the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment - which was for­malised un­der the Fyz­abad Ac­cord, dis­in­te­grat­ed in of­fice faster than the prover­bial “Red House Fire.”

Where’s the ide­o­log­i­cal ba­sis up­on which this “pick-up side” has been formed? What are the ob­jec­tives? More­over, un­der ex­am­i­na­tion, the par­ties to the coali­tion have lit­tle to rec­om­mend them for gov­er­nance and or op­po­si­tion. In­deed, are they tru­ly “par­ties?”

With re­spect to the trade unions, while they are solid­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of work­ers, their rights and as­pi­ra­tions, the unions have found it quite un­com­fort­able and ul­ti­mate­ly dis­as­trous to be in a po­lit­i­cal bed with politi­cians. Fur­ther­more, they have tra­di­tion­al­ly re­ceived lit­tle sup­port from their mem­bers, who make a dis­tinc­tion be­tween their po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­cerns.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready not­ed that this time around she has more time to work on har­mon­is­ing her new coali­tion forces. Truth be told, how­ev­er, the en­ti­ties in­volved have not yet pro­vid­ed the proof of be­ing able to cre­ate a coali­tion of sub­stance in the in­ter­est of “the peo­ple.”