To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?In an­nounc­ing the ac­cord be­tween her po­lit­i­cal par­ty, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, and Con­gress of the Peo­ple, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that "pol­i­tics is a civilised form of war." The Op­po­si­tion Leader was ex­plain­ing why the ac­cord was not be­ing made pub­lic, in con­cert with the an­nounce­ment of a for­malised agree­ment be­tween the two par­ties to con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion on May 24. Con­cerned that po­lit­i­cal "en­e­mies" would make use of the de­tails of such an agree­ment on the hus­tings, she chose to keep even the broad scope of the agree­ment se­cret. But Per­sad-Bisses­sar must al­so be aware that her bat­tles are not on­ly with the par­ty in pow­er, but al­so with the reser­va­tions and con­cerns of un­de­cid­ed vot­ers, and even the com­mit­ted sup­port­ers of the UNC and COP who are like­ly to have con­cerns about the new arrange­ments. The par­ties in op­po­si­tion have, since the PNM re­turned to pow­er in 2007, cut a less than ac­cept­able pro­file as an al­ter­na­tive to the sit­ting gov­ern­ment.

With just a few weeks to go be­fore the elec­torate re­turns to the polls, the UNC-COP coali­tion has a lot of work to do to per­suade the pub­lic that it is a vi­able po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tive as a uni­fied op­po­si­tion force. Work­ing against this coali­tion of ne­ces­si­ty is the shaky his­to­ry of such po­lit­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tions in this coun­try's po­lit­i­cal past. The 1986 merg­ing of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion, the Tapia House Move­ment, the Unit­ed Labour Front and the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress swept the PNM out of pow­er in an ig­no­min­ious 33-3 de­feat. With­in two years, that amal­ga­ma­tion par­ty be­gan to col­lapse, with the de­fec­tion of Bas­deo Pan­day and six Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. By the 1991 elec­tion, the tri­umphant cry of "One Love" that had swept the NAR so de­ci­sive­ly in­to pow­er had dwin­dled to two seats in To­ba­go.

Nor can Win­ston Dook­er­an and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ly on the re­sults of the 2007 elec­tions as any guide to their fu­ture prospects ei­ther. While the sta­tis­tics of that elec­tion, which ben­e­fit­ed from a 66 per cent vot­er turnout, sug­gest that the UNC (29.7 per cent of the vote) and CoP (22.6 per cent) of two years ago would have been a po­tent force in com­bi­na­tion against the PNM (45.8 per cent), that kind of arith­metic re­mains pure­ly hy­po­thet­i­cal. The elec­torate will be swayed, on elec­tion day, by the par­ties and plans pre­sent­ed to them for their choice, not by imag­i­nary amal­ga­ma­tions. The chal­lenge fac­ing the UNC and COP is, at core, one of hon­est and ef­fec­tive sales­man­ship, per­suad­ing the vot­ing pub­lic in 36 days that it is a re­al and iden­ti­fi­able po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty that rep­re­sents the best of its com­po­nent parts.

There is no room in this con­strained time frame, with this lev­el of vot­er anx­i­ety, for any­thing but ab­solute trans­paren­cy in ar­tic­u­lat­ing the ar­chi­tec­ture, frame­works and pro­pos­als of this swift­ly-stitched-to­geth­er po­lit­i­cal an­i­mal. In a world that em­pha­sis­es open­ness and in­for­ma­tion shar­ing, the UNC-COP al­liance is not on­ly chal­lenged by the slings and ar­rows of its po­lit­i­cal neme­sis, but by the need to per­suade an elec­torate, wise enough to de­mand greater lev­els of po­lit­i­cal dis­clo­sure than ever be­fore, that it is more than a se­ries of hand­shakes of con­ve­nience of­fered to the me­dia's cam­eras. There can be no back­room deals, no un­writ­ten "un­der­stand­ings," no promis­es to po­lit­i­cal part­ners that the vot­ing pub­lic need not be aware of. Fac­ing a po­lit­i­cal ri­val with a re­cent pub­lic his­to­ry of quite vis­i­ble ac­tiv­i­ty, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, all that the new po­lit­i­cal cou­pling pre­sent­ed by Win­ston Dook­er­an and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can of­fer is clar­i­ty about its plans for Trinidad and To­ba­go and its man­i­festo.

That doc­u­ment must be de­clared and pub­lished ear­ly, to al­low vot­ers a chance to eval­u­ate prop­er­ly and com­pare its pro­pos­als for the na­tion's fu­ture with those that the PNM has been ar­tic­u­lat­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly dur­ing the last few years. With no time to tease, the UNC-COP al­liance must ar­tic­u­late a po­si­tion of open­ness, dis­cus­sion and trans­paren­cy on its plat­form, to stand any chance of dis­tin­guish­ing it­self in a star­tling­ly short time frame, while win­ning the trust of a pub­lic in­creas­ing­ly ca­pa­ble of dis­cern­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween PR puffery and re­al­is­tic plan­ning.