To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

With lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion due this year, the op­po­si­tion par­ty, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and its non-elect­ed coun­ter­part, Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), are drift­ing to­ward the kind of po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment that their re­spec­tive con­stituen­cies have been hop­ing for since the last gen­er­al elec­tion. In a sur­pris­ing me­dia con­fer­ence on Fri­day, both the COP's Win­ston Dook­er­an and the UNC's Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar agreed that the next elec­tion would find both par­ties work­ing "to­wards chart­ing and draft­ing and craft­ing strate­gies for uni­fi­ca­tion." Both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers com­mit­ted to con­test­ing the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion in a "one-to-one arrange­ment," sug­gest­ing that the par­ties would, at the very least, not step on each oth­er's toes in their ef­forts to mount a cred­i­ble ef­fort to win votes from the PNM.

The meet­ing ful­fils the least re­quire­ments of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's elec­tion trail com­mit­ments to the neb­u­lous goal of "uni­ty" that be­came the foun­da­tion of her suc­cess­ful cam­paign for the post of UNC po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. But this re­mains the min­i­mum that can and should be done. The COP has sur­vived po­lit­i­cal­ly through a com­bi­na­tion of ag­gres­sive cam­paign­ing for pub­lic at­ten­tion and a sur­pris­ing­ly ro­bust core of sup­port­ers who adamant­ly con­tin­ued to re­ject oth­er po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tives. A UNC, led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ad­dress­es at least some of the con­cerns of that stead­fast group of COP sup­port­ers, and it would be a naive COP lead­er­ship that would ex­pect the po­lit­i­cal sta­tus quo to stand with­out some ef­fort at po­lit­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion.

But even the most fick­le COP sup­port­er will not have missed the tur­bu­lence that still re­mains at the heart of the UNC's lead­er­ship. The re­cal­ci­trance of for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader and Cou­va North MP, Bas­deo Pan­day, to ac­knowl­edge and en­gage the elec­toral wish­es of his own par­ty, is now am­pli­fy­ing in­to a deep­er di­vide, as three wil­ful UNC back­benchers: Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, Kelvin Ram­nath and Pan­day, seem keen to stoke the worst fears of UNC hard­lin­ers by ab­sent­ing them­selves from the par­ty's cau­cus meet­ings, and con­ven­ing their own gath­er­ings. These par­al­lel group­ings were de­scribed by Cou­va South MP, Kelvin Ram­nath, as an ef­fort to en­sure that "the par­ty doesn't run away with a few op­por­tunists."

"We who laboured to build the UNC would not want to see the UNC end up like the NAR," Ram­nath ex­plained. And at the heart of the chal­lenges fac­ing a mean­ing­ful UNC-COP al­liance and the para­noia of the sliv­ers of the UNC still op­pos­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is pre­cise­ly this fear; the ter­ror of dis­en­fran­chise­ment and the rise of a par­ty dri­ven ex­clu­sive­ly by the con­cerns of the mid­dle class. The lessons of the NAR, the ONR be­fore it and the COP af­ter it, are sim­ple ones. A po­lit­i­cal par­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not gath­er enough votes to win even a sin­gle rep­re­sen­ta­tive seat in Par­lia­ment with­out the de­ci­sive sup­port of that po­lit­i­cal sec­tor de­scribed as "the base�" the large, vote-aware con­stituen­cy of the elec­torate that has vul­gar­ly been court­ed on the ba­sis of the prin­ci­ples of covenants, com­pen­sa­tion and clan.

The col­lapse of the NAR, the first and on­ly mean­ing­ful op­po­si­tion merg­ing of a range of class­es in de­fi­ance of the PNM, re­mains an in­struc­tive chap­ter in Trinidad and To­ba­go's po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry. At the heart of that po­lit­i­cal coali­tion's fail­ure was the in­abil­i­ty to ce­ment a com­mon po­lit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and align­ment of in­tent that sat­is­fied all the play­ers. With­out that fun­da­men­tal dis­cus­sion, any at­tempt at merg­ing po­lit­i­cal cul­tures will, ul­ti­mate­ly, be doomed to fail­ure and re­main a coali­tion of can­di­dates and op­por­tu­ni­ty, rather than a re­al po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

At Fri­day's meet­ing, it was clear that the COP and UNC po­lit­i­cal lead­ers at least ac­knowl­edge the enor­mi­ty of the chal­lenge be­fore them, how un­prece­dent­ed that work is and the re­al­i­ty of re­sis­tance with­in their own par­ties to the fun­da­men­tal changes that the ef­fort will bring. Bring­ing po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty to the elec­torate will be­gin with a demon­stra­tion of ma­tu­ri­ty in po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, and the ex­am­ple that the UNC and the COP sets on this crit­i­cal is­sue will be worth ob­serv­ing dur­ing the com­ing months.