Gail Alexan­der

To­day is De­ci­sion Day for the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and the world. As of 7 am and con­tin­u­ing un­til 7 o’clock tonight, Amer­i­cans will de­cide on who will be their 47th US Pres­i­dent and the fate of the globe.

An es­ti­mat­ed 225,000 T&T na­tion­als who live in the US have been and will be play­ing their part in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing vot­ing process that be­gan weeks ago.

To­day’s elec­tion pit­ting Re­pub­li­can con­tender for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, 78, against De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, cur­rent US Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris, 60, has the mak­ings of a his­toric event.

In 2016, Trump de­feat­ed De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Hillary Clin­ton. To­day he’s fight­ing a younger woman—of colour with Ja­maican and In­di­an roots.

The cam­paign, which has seen spec­tac­u­lar lows and highs, has fea­tured each side play­ing to Amer­i­cans’ fears and con­cerns on is­sues in­clud­ing the econ­o­my, im­mi­gra­tion, democ­ra­cy, abor­tion, and ed­u­ca­tion.

A T&T-born cou­ple, orig­i­nal­ly from south Trinidad, who has been liv­ing in Mi­a­mi for al­most 50 years, vot­ed by mail three weeks ago.

“That ex­er­cise start­ed ear­li­er than the ear­ly vot­ing,” the fam­i­ly spokesman said, not­ing US polls lean­ing to­wards Har­ris.

A for­mer Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent based in New Jer­sey for 20 years said of vot­ing in her third elec­tion, “I did ear­ly vot­ing on Stat­en Is­land last Sat­ur­day. It took on­ly about ten min­utes, and I got my lit­tle stick­er that I vot­ed.

Our ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly in New York and Texas al­so did ear­ly vot­ing.

“What I’d want is a pres­i­dent who’s for democ­ra­cy. Not some­body dic­tat­ing what to do, but a leader who al­lows you to make your own choic­es about your body. There’s a cer­tain amount of ten­sion; most peo­ple are con­cerned about what will hap­pen or not. Some peo­ple have signs out­side their homes sup­port­ing one can­di­date or an­oth­er but not as plen­ti­ful as be­fore.”

A fam­i­ly for­mer­ly from Curepe, now in Flori­da for 14 years, is root­ing for Har­ris.

“We want a woman pres­i­dent! Ka­mala Har­ris is in­tel­li­gent and qual­i­fied; she’ll pre­serve our democ­ra­cy and fight for lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all. She’ll be a bea­con of hope to Amer­i­ca and the rest of the world; most of all, fight for women’s rights!”

A for­mer St Au­gus­tine res­i­dent liv­ing in Tam­pa for 20 years is hop­ing for a pres­i­dent “who is for the peo­ple, who obeys the rule of law and im­proves peo­ple’s lives. I did ear­ly vot­ing al­ready, so we just have to watch the out­come on TV.”

Fu­ture of Caribbean

For­mer UNC min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said, “Be­ing T&T’s ma­jor trad­ing part­ner, al­most 40 per cent of both im­ports and ex­ports, the elec­tion’s out­come can have sig­nif­i­cant con­se­quences for T&T in sev­er­al ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly trade, se­cu­ri­ty, and en­er­gy.”

He added, “En­er­gy pol­i­cy is a ma­jor con­cern for T&T, as the PNM Gov­ern­ment has pinned all our eco­nom­ic hopes on the Drag­on Gas Field agree­ment, which al­lows T&T to col­lab­o­rate with Venezuela for nat­ur­al gas de­vel­op­ment un­der a US Trea­sury De­part­ment li­cence. A Trump pres­i­den­cy, with a stricter ‘Amer­i­ca First’ pol­i­cy, could very well end these arrange­ments, im­pact­ing T&T’s en­er­gy rev­enue and growth prospects sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“Har­ris’ pa­ter­nal con­nec­tions to the Caribbean and her em­pha­sis on clos­er US-Cari­com re­la­tions have been wel­comed re­gion­al­ly. Her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s cur­rent ap­proach fos­ters diplo­mat­ic, eco­nom­ic, and cul­tur­al ex­changes, which ben­e­fits T&T.

A change in lead­er­ship could shift the tone of US pol­i­cy to­wards the Caribbean, as Trump has his­tor­i­cal­ly pri­ori­tised do­mes­tic over in­ter­na­tion­al al­liances.”

Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles be­lieves the elec­tion is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant for Caribbean cit­i­zens.

“If Har­ris wins, for the first time a US pres­i­dent with Caribbean roots will hold ar­guably the most im­por­tant lead­er­ship role in the world.

“Based on her ut­ter­ances, Har­ris will pre­side over a gov­ern­ment more com­mit­ted to mul­ti­lat­er­al diplo­ma­cy, glob­al trade, and the US con­tin­u­ing its lead­er­ship role in cham­pi­oning de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples glob­al­ly. Cari­com lead­ers can ex­pect at least a re­spect­ful hear­ing at the seat at the var­i­ous ta­bles of Wash­ing­ton de­ci­sion-mak­ing and bet­ter out­comes from our cross bor­der en­er­gy ini­tia­tives with Venezuela.”

Charles added, “If Trump wins, we can ex­pect a host of pos­si­ble neg­a­tive out­comes and sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in de­por­tee num­bers if Trump de­liv­ers on his threat to send home mil­lions of un­doc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents. We can ex­pect Trump to be more force­ful than Har­ris in con­fronting the Maduro regime with all the neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions for our cross-bor­der en­er­gy arrange­ments.”