To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The out­come of gen­er­al elec­tions in the Caribbean over the last three years is hard­ly an in­di­ca­tion as to how the elec­torate here will make a de­ter­mi­na­tion about the choice of par­ty to gov­ern for the next five years.

How­ev­er, be­cause of the in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness of the pol­i­tics and the eco­nom­ics and the drift of Caribbean peo­ples, it could be use­ful to at least ex­am­ine what has hap­pened in elec­tions stretch­ing over the last few years in the re­gion. Of the ten gen­er­al elec­tions count­ed over the pe­ri­od, rul­ing par­ties have been de­feat­ed sev­en of those times, on­ly the rul­ing Do­mini­ca Labour Par­ty, the St Kitts/Nevis Labour Par­ty and the Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty in An­tigua/Bar­bu­da have sur­vived. Fur­ther, the rul­ing Uni­ty Labour Par­ty in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, led by the ebul­lient Ralph Gon­salves, lost a ref­er­en­dum late last year on the is­sue of be­com­ing a re­pub­li­can state away from the British monar­chy. But as you read this, the UPP of Bald­win Spencer in An­tigua is fight­ing for sur­vival, the High Court hav­ing ruled against the le­gal­i­ty of how the par­ty won three of the seats in the elec­tions of last year. So here again, de­pend­ing on the rul­ing of the East­ern Caribbean Court of Ap­peal, an­oth­er rul­ing par­ty could be in trou­ble.

Stal­wart and long-stand­ing lead­ers such as Owen Arthur, Kei­th Mitchell and Ken­ny An­tho­ny have been un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dis­lodged from their po­si­tions of com­fort and seem­ing im­preg­nabil­i­ty. And while the Gov­ern­ment of Ralph Gon­salves has sur­vived, the pop­u­la­tion cer­tain­ly sent a mes­sage to him and his team that they should not take its sup­port for grant­ed and be­have as if win­ning a gen­er­al elec­tion is a blank cheque to do as the regime pleas­es. In the in­stance of the Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty of Owen Arthur, seek­ing a fourth straight term, and seem­ing to be in­vin­ci­ble, the BLP lost be­cause of the "scan­dals and al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion sur­round­ing" the par­ty in of­fice, analysed a ma­jor Ba­jan pub­li­ca­tion post the 2008 elec­tion. The New Na­tion­al Par­ty of Kei­th Mitchell suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate in Grena­da, that par­ty hav­ing gov­erned the coun­try for three con­sec­u­tive terms, in­clud­ing win­ning all seats in 1999. But the NNP met its Wa­ter­loo in 2008, los­ing to the Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress of Till­man Thomas. Once again al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and the seem­ing lack of re­spect for the views of the wider so­ci­ety were said to be cen­tral to the de­feat of Mr Mitchell. The de­feat of Ken­ny An­tho­ny and the St Lu­cia Labour Par­ty was al­so said to have re­sult­ed from too long a stint in of­fice and the elec­torate feel­ing the need for change.

In T&T, the elec­torate, hav­ing spent 30 long years with the PNM, moved in 1986 to a new op­tion, a coali­tion of the op­po­si­tion forces. There­after, the ma­jor par­ties were shut­tled in and out of of­fice at al­most every elec­tion. But the PNM has stood firm these last nine years, hav­ing been put there by Pres­i­dent Robin­son in the in­fa­mous cir­cum­stances of the 18-18 tie. Through a com­bi­na­tion of us­ing its time in of­fice to con­sol­i­date it­self and the frag­men­ta­tion among the op­po­si­tion par­ties, the PNM has sur­vived. With the op­po­si­tion forces ap­pear­ing to come to­geth­er, are Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning and his par­ty in dan­ger of fol­low­ing the re­gion­al trend of the last few years? Or is there a pos­si­bil­i­ty that Mr Man­ning will buck the re­gion­al trend as a re­sult of the weak­ness­es and fail­ures of the coali­tion gov­ern­ments in T&T and in the Caribbean, along with the im­prove­ment in the stan­dard of liv­ing of thou­sands of peo­ple in this coun­try in the last decade? The cam­paign has on­ly just be­gun and it is far too ear­ly to say if the Caribbean trend–which saw 70 per cent of rul­ing par­ties be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice–will be con­tin­ued here.