The last time Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spear­head­ed a po­lit­i­cal al­liance, she was new­ly elect­ed as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and a snap elec­tion had been called by then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, now de­ceased.

That al­liance, so­lid­i­fied through the April 2010 Fyz­abad De­c­la­ra­tion in­to the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP), was the po­lit­i­cal coali­tion that scored a land­slide win over the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), tak­ing 29 of the 41 seats.

Com­par­isons are al­ready be­ing made be­tween that coali­tion fea­tur­ing the UNC and small­er op­po­si­tion par­ties—the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) and Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC)—and the po­lit­i­cal al­liance an­nounced ear­li­er this week.

How­ev­er, the COP, now un­der new lead­er­ship, is the on­ly par­ty from the 2010 coali­tion that is part of the lat­est op­po­si­tion al­liance aim­ing to un­seat the PNM in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

This time around, the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) led by Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der and the Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND), un­der Garvin Nicholas, are the oth­er par­ties that have joined the UNC. In­stead of the labour-led MSJ, this al­liance in­cludes a group­ing of five promi­nent trade unions.

No­tably ab­sent is Gary Grif­fith’s Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) and so far, there is no word from the UNC on whether To­ba­go-based po­lit­i­cal par­ties will be in­vit­ed to be part of its al­liance, or if it plans to con­test those two crit­i­cal seats. The To­ba­go poli­ties par­ties, though, yes­ter­day re­ject­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any coali­tion with the UNC.

How­ev­er, since cam­paign sea­son is not yet in full swing, fur­ther de­vel­op­ments can be ex­pect­ed in the com­ing weeks and months as the race heats up. The most keen­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed mat­ter is the an­nounce­ment of the elec­tion date by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, with 14 years at the helm of the UNC un­der her belt, has al­ready de­clared that the new po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty will be even “bet­ter than the 2010 Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship” be­cause there has been “more time to have fur­ther dis­cus­sions to en­sure that we put this coali­tion to­geth­er.” She de­scribed the new­ly formed en­ti­ty as a coali­tion of in­ter­ests, not­ing that she is en­ter­ing in­to the new arrange­ment with much more ex­pe­ri­ence and that there are op­por­tu­ni­ties this time around for “more de­lib­er­ate coali­tion-build­ing ef­forts.”

Still, this ef­fort to form an­oth­er elec­toral jug­ger­naut to de­feat the PNM is over­shad­owed by the April 21, 2010, Fyz­abad De­c­la­ra­tion, an ef­fort at pow­er-shar­ing that start­ed strong but which had fall­en apart by the time the 2015 elec­tions came around.

The same can be said of every oth­er po­lit­i­cal al­liance in T&T’s post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry.

The UNC’s pre­de­ces­sor, the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF), joined with oth­er par­ties, in­clud­ing the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion (ONR), the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress (DAC) and the Tapia House Move­ment, to form the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR). It was, for a while, a po­lit­i­cal pow­er­house that in­flict­ed a blis­ter­ing 33-3 beat­ing on the PNM in 1986. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it didn’t take long for ma­jor rifts to de­vel­op, lead­ing to the ma­jor fall­out that led to Club 88 and then the birth of the UNC. A 1995 arrange­ment be­tween the NAR and the UNC to break a 17-17 elec­tion dead­lock al­so fell apart af­ter a few years.

The ma­jor chal­lenge for Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her new al­lies then, is to forge a po­lit­i­cal part­ner­ship that can sur­vive any ide­o­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal dif­fer­ences that might arise pre and post-elec­tion. Oth­er­wise, his­to­ry could re­peat it­self.