Gail Alexan­der

On the days that po­lit­i­cal meet­ings aren't fir­ing ver­bal­ly, the bat­tle is now be­ing fought in sound. While ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy ini­ti­at­ed that mu­si­cal fight for the UNC, urg­ing that "Patrick Have To Go," Ter­ri Lyons and var­i­ous oth­er singers have been co-opt­ed for PNM re­but­tals in­clud­ing "Man­ning Com­ing Back." Af­ter con­serv­ing fire­pow­er in the last two weeks–stick­ing to short jabs at each oth­er–the rul­ing PNM be­gan shed­ding its gloves in Tabaquite on Wednes­day as sev­er­al miles away in Fyz­abad a unit­ed op­po­si­tion charge was launched that night. The bat­tle­ground for their May 24 po­lit­i­cal face-off will in­volve sev­er­al mar­gin­al seats in­clud­ing some new­ly mar­gin­al, due to re­cent bound­ary and polling sta­tion shifts and in­ter­nal move­ments.

Not the least of which is in­sti­tu­tion of hous­ing de­vel­op­ments in the east-west cor­ri­dor and south­ern Trinidad. Pointe-a-Pierre, for in­stance, lost 860 seats to San Fer­nan­do West while sev­er­al hun­dred dis­tricts were trans­ferred to Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la and St Joseph lost two Bam­boo di­vi­sions to St Au­gus­tine. Laser­fo­cus on is­sues is ex­pect­ed to ze­ro in af­ter May 2 when both par­ties launch can­di­dates and man­i­festos. From then on–if not al­ready–T&T's 1.038 mil­lion elec­torate will have four weeks of night­ly bom­bard­ment in which to try to dis­tin­guish re­al­i­ty from rhetoric, pre­var­i­ca­tion with­in promis­es and make judg­ments based on proven act as op­posed to ver­bal claim.

Aranguez for UNC launch?

Al­though the UNC turns 22 years next Fri­day, the par­ty is yet to de­cide if to use its birth­place–Aranguez Sa­van­nah–for the up­com­ing launch of its can­di­dates and man­i­festo ex­pect­ed next Sun­day. De­bate on a venue for the big event was tak­ing place yes­ter­day with an­oth­er front-run­ner be­ing the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah–where the NAR launched its his­toric 1986 cam­paign which wal­loped the PNM. UNC of­fi­cials said no de­ci­sion was made yet. How­ev­er, they were dis­cussing whether Mid Cen­tre Mall, for in­stance, would be big enough to ac­com­mo­date the "thou­sands ex­pect­ed," af­ter Wednes­day's Fyz­abad turnout, they added.

The large crowds of the uni­ty meet­ings have ig­nit­ed enough con­fi­dence in the par­ty for sup­port­ers to pro­claim the "mo­men­tum is build­ing." If the par­ty opts for a north­ern venue–to match its all-in­clu­sive reimag­ing–it would com­plete an on-go­ing re­brand­ing which has seen a shift away not on­ly from the UNC's orig­i­nal colours but al­so away from the stylings of founder Bas­deo Pan­day to new leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's per­son­al stamp. Plat­form speak­ers' shirts fea­tur­ing UNC's trade­mark or­ange (of the ris­ing sun) have been trad­ed in for yel­low (of the shin­ing sun). And re­spons­es from sup­port­ers to ques­tions about their par­ty of choice or who they're vot­ing for is more usu­al­ly an­swered with "Kam­la..." rather than "UNC..."

The new leader of three months, with rein­vig­o­rat­ed dic­tion, is now re­plete with a com­ple­ment of full-bod­ied "rs" in her plat­form­s­peak.

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly be­gan in­creas­ing cam­paign shots by pre­view­ing elec­tion promis­es, she has not yet lugged out the am­mu­ni­tion which she said the UNC in­tend­ed to launch against Man­ning in the abort­ed April 9 no-con­fi­dence de­bate. Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed the UNC had in­for­ma­tion link­ing Man­ning to the con­tro­ver­sial Gua­napo church and Shang­hai con­struc­tion com­pa­ny.

McLeod's PM am­bi­tions in 1998

Bid­ding to change and widen UNC's base and na­tion­al im­age–af­ter oust­ing the 75-year-old Pan­day–the UNC's front­line part­ners now in­clude COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an, 67; re­tired OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al Er­rol Mcleod, 66, and ex-Black Pow­er leader Makan­dal Daa­ga, whose NJAC un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed elec­tions since 1981. (Daa­ga is "in his 70s," UNC of­fi­cials said.) Hold­ing forth in Fyz­abad on Wednes­day, Daa­ga ap­peared to have lost lit­tle of his 1970s fire-and-brim­stone in­ten­si­ty. While Per­sad-Bisses­sar stuck to sym­bol­ic state­ments re­gard­ing the event, McLeod, get­ting down to busi­ness, jumped ahead to re­veal man­i­festo plans for se­cur­ing work­ers' rights.

UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er and MPs Roodal Mooni­lal and Chan­dresh Shar­ma were shift­ed low­er than the seat­ing at Fyz­abad's meet­ing to give the new­com­ers pride of place on the plat­form. How­ev­er, the pres­ence of McLeod's MSJ and a pledge by unions not to sup­port the PNM for elec­tions has seen a com­ing to­geth­er of the labour move­ment–ben­e­fit­ing the UNC–when a year ago the labour sec­tor was split. Still it is yet an­oth­er of the ironies of the post-Pan­day UNC that the par­ty which the sug­ar union leader found­ed 22 years ago (next Fri­day) has in his ab­sence as­sumed more of a labour align­ment. McLeod, who has had to de­ny be­ing a PN­Mite at least twice in his ca­reer as OW­TU head, had clashed with Pan­day over the years when Natuc was be­ing born and when the UNC was in of­fice. McLeod had said when he re­tired in 2008 that he did not in­tend to en­ter pol­i­tics.

In Ju­ly 1998, how­ev­er, in a TG ar­ti­cle, re­porter Louis Homer re­port­ed at that time that McLeod made "clear his am­bi­tion to be­come Prime Min­is­ter." McLeod was quot­ed as telling union mem­bers that he did "not want to be no or­di­nary par­lia­men­tar­i­an (sic) "since he had been an MP from 1976 to 1981. "If I have to have the pow­er of the Prime Min­is­ter to solve the coun­try's prob­lems, I am about that too," McLeod is quot­ed as say­ing, adding that nei­ther the PNM nor UNC had done any­thing for the work­ing class. "I shall con­tin­ue to stand in op­po­si­tion to all the dis­crim­i­na­tion tak­ing place and if I am to bull­doze my way in­to Par­lia­ment I am pre­pared to go that way," McLeod was al­so quot­ed as say­ing.

The group McLeod has part­nered with–the UNC–is yet to fi­nalise can­di­dates for 18 seats where nom­i­nees are await­ing word af­ter screen­ing and where screen­ing is yet to take place. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Mon­day she did not want in­for­ma­tion leak­ing out to po­lit­i­cal "en­e­mies" (sic). How­ev­er, UNC's "friends" be­lieve the si­lence where some bor­der­line nom­i­nees are con­cerned and planned an­nounce­ment close to Nom­i­na­tion Day are be­ing em­ployed to curb any who might seek to con­test in­de­pen­dent­ly–or oth­er­wise–if not cho­sen.

Vas­ant ag­griev­ed

St Au­gus­tine MP Vas­ant Bharath, still await­ing word on his fate–out­side of the seat be­ing giv­en to COP's Prakash Ra­mad­har –is won­der­ing whether he has in­deed paid the ul­ti­mate price for fail­ing to sign the let­ter of sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be­come Op­po­si­tion Leader. Bharath was not among the eight sig­na­to­ries, but at­tend­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's in­vesti­ture and pledged sup­port. Af­ter con­stituen­cy mem­bers threat­ened to protest his re­moval, Bharath said yes­ter­day: "The fact that the seat was giv­en to the COP came to me via news­pa­per re­ports, not the par­ty. So of course res­i­dents are con­cerned be­cause they have come to trust the work I've done. I've had a lot of calls from ag­i­tat­ed mem­bers say­ing the sit­u­a­tion is un­fair since the par­ty has not made a state­ment on the is­sue.

"A new can­di­date would have about three weeks to meet the peo­ple, walk the seat, cam­paign and im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary mech­a­nism–this is not an overnight thing." For­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day's broth­er, MP Sub­has Pan­day, is al­so await­ing the out­come of his re­cent screen­ing. Pan­day's daugh­ter, MP Mikela Pan­day, MP Hamza Rafeeq and Cou­va South in­cum­bent Kelvin Ram­nath are still to be screened. Ex-leader Pan­day said: "I be­lieve the screen­ing team is be­ing vin­dic­tive. Look at what has hap­pened with Bharath. It ap­pears peo­ple who con­test­ed against the leader are re­gard­ed as an en­e­my and ought not to be on their slate. Their fo­cus seems to be pow­er and there­fore there must be no 'dis­si­dents' around.

"I don't think she wants any Pan­day on the slate as she knows a Pan­day would hold great sway over the rank and file and she prob­a­bly be­lieves this will de­tract from her pow­er." Pan­day al­so has con­cerns about the par­ty he found­ed: "It's fast dis­ap­pear­ing. A lot of it is be­ing bro­ken down with their reimag­ing. If you look well the peo­ple we rep­re­sent­ed are nowhere around. Peo­ple should be con­cerned, but we shall on­ly get the re­al pic­ture when the hype is over," he added.

Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, al­so await­ing his fate as his con­stituents lob­by for him, warned: "Tabaquite is not a safe seat since we had a bit­ter fight in 2007. The PNM has a large con­stituen­cy now. If you have any fall-out it could eas­i­ly be­come mar­gin­al." Ex-ULF mem­ber Ram­nath, yet to be­come part of UNC's new labour part­ners, added: "The sup­port for the unit­ed force is clear. It is the UNC's best chance at Gov­ern­ment but any fool­ish mis­take could make a dif­fer­ence."

PNM poll out

Rul­ing par­ty strate­gists, meet­ing night­ly, have start­ed con­fig­ur­ing around a poll done on the par­ty's po­si­tion over April 15 which has spurred ac­tiv­i­ty on, PNM sources said. The par­ty is yet to un­leash Diego Mar­tin West MP Kei­th Row­ley, whose leisure­ly re­turn from over­seas–af­ter he was ap­proved as can­di­date–sends enough of a sig­nal that he does not in­tend to be ma­nip­u­lat­ed. Row­ley's of­fer­ing of him­self to con­test left the choice to Man­ning's screen­ing team to re­tain or re­move him.

How­ev­er the team's ap­proval tossed the ball back to Row­ley, plac­ing him on PNM's team which will, in bat­tle, have to de­fend the rul­ing par­ty against al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in­clud­ing against ex- Ude­cott head Calder Hart. With such com­pro­mise of his po­si­tion, lit­tle won­der Row­ley, out of T&T, did not hus­tle back to the hus­tings as PNM launched meet­ings. Row­ley's con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive con­firmed he on­ly re­turned from his week-long trip on Thurs­day, but could not say why he re­mained away for so long in the elec­tion sea­son. Con­stituen­cy chair­man Sigler Jack said the unit is wait­ing to be con­tact­ed by the par­ty re­gard­ing ap­pear­ances.

Fol­low­ing the drop­ping of MPs Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and An­tho­ny Roberts and MP Stan­ford Cal­len­dar's de­ci­sion to stand down, Row­ley is now the last man stand­ing from the fi­nal few old-guard MPs on Man­ning's team. Up to yes­ter­day's PNM's cam­paign team had no in­di­ca­tion when Row­ley would speak at a meet­ing. A PNM source said Row­ley's ap­pear­ance will be a strat­e­gy de­ci­sion "since he holds the key to the swing vote."