Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves that the out­come of the re­cent Unit­ed States elec­tion, which saw Don­ald Trump de­clared the 47th Pres­i­dent, will not in­flu­ence when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley calls the next gen­er­al elec­tion in T&T.

Un­like the US, which has fixed elec­tion dates, T&T does not have a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed elec­tion date. Ac­cord­ing to the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple’s Act, a writ of elec­tion must be is­sued by the Prime Min­is­ter, spec­i­fy­ing both the day of nom­i­na­tion (no less than 14 days af­ter the writ is is­sued) and the polling day (no less than 21 days af­ter nom­i­na­tion day), giv­ing vot­ers a min­i­mum of 35 days’ no­tice. The Con­sti­tu­tion fur­ther stip­u­lates that elec­tions must be called with­in 90 days of Par­lia­ment’s dis­so­lu­tion.

Ra­goonath, how­ev­er, dis­missed con­cerns that Trump’s elec­tion vic­to­ry would af­fect the tim­ing of T&T’s polls. While he chose not to spec­u­late on the Prime Min­is­ter’s pre­cise rea­son­ing, Ra­goonath sug­gest­ed that Row­ley might be keep­ing an eye on the evolv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing US for­eign pol­i­cy un­der Trump.

“I think what may very well be the is­sue is that he (Row­ley) will want to wait to hear the pro­nounce­ments of Don­ald Trump, prob­a­bly even be­fore tak­ing of­fice, as to the re­la­tion­ship that the US will have with ex­ter­nal part­ners and oth­er coun­tries such as Venezuela,” he said.

“I don’t think Trinidad and To­ba­go is in the line of sight of the US at this point in time. We have noth­ing re­al­ly cringy to say that we are go­ing to be a tar­get. Venezuela may very well be that is­sue, and if the sanc­tions are reim­posed in Venezuela, then that could cre­ate an is­sue with Drag­on gas. “Trinidad and To­ba­go is a very small dot in the big pic­ture of things. As Don­ald Trump him­self tab­u­lat­ed, they are sit­ting on a gold mine with all their oil and gas; Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­duc­tion has been de­clin­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Guyana may be more in line with what Don­ald Trump may be con­cerned about as to who they will sell their gas to and so on,” he added.

Ra­goonath point­ed out that do­mes­tic fac­tors, such as the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment for a bud­get to be passed by the end of Oc­to­ber, could in­flu­ence the tim­ing of the elec­tion.

He not­ed that af­ter Par­lia­ment is dis­solved con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly at the end of Au­gust, the elec­tion would have to be held with­in the first two weeks of Oc­to­ber for the bud­get to be read by the end of the month.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that hold­ing an elec­tion in that time frame would be lo­gis­ti­cal­ly chal­leng­ing.

Based on re­ports from with­in the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Ra­goonath ac­knowl­edged that the PNM’s gen­er­al coun­cil is not keen on hold­ing elec­tions in the cur­rent cal­en­dar year. He al­so dis­missed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an elec­tion oc­cur­ring dur­ing next year’s Car­ni­val, which falls on March 4 and 5.

“Of course, we don’t dis­rupt Car­ni­val with an elec­tion, so that in ef­fect tells us that the elec­tion most like­ly will be called some­time be­tween af­ter Car­ni­val and the end of Au­gust,” he said.

Ra­goonath al­so sug­gest­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter would like­ly need to as­sess the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my and the de­liv­ery of key bud­getary promis­es be­fore de­cid­ing on the elec­tion date.

“If the econ­o­my is not per­form­ing and they can­not roll out any elec­tion good­ies in a mid-term bud­get, they may de­cide to call the elec­tion be­fore that mid-term re­view,” he ex­plained.

PNM stal­wart Fer­di­nand “Fer­die” Fer­reira shared a sim­i­lar view, stat­ing that the most im­por­tant fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the elec­tion date would be as­sess­ing the mood of the elec­torate.

“Patrick Man­ning in 2010 said he was the most vil­i­fied man in the coun­try and one month af­ter he call an elec­tion and lose he gov­ern­ment. I don’t think Dr Row­ley will make such a mis­take. I think he’s more po­lit­i­cal­ly as­tute than that,” he said.

He, too, dis­missed any no­tion that the US elec­tion out­come would have a bear­ing on T&T’s elec­tion time­line.

“If I thought that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go were fool­ish enough to be swayed by ex­ter­nal events like that, I’d mi­grate im­me­di­ate­ly,” Fer­reira said in re­sponse to Trump be­ing re-elect­ed. He added that he be­lieved Dr Row­ley would as­sess the mood of the elec­torate be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion.

While Fer­reira did not elab­o­rate on spe­cif­ic vari­ables in­flu­enc­ing Row­ley’s de­ci­sion, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Ralph Maraj sug­gest­ed that one im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for Row­ley would be to es­tab­lish a trans­par­ent process for hand­ing over lead­er­ship of the par­ty, in light of spec­u­la­tion that Row­ley may be plan­ning to step down.

The prospect of a new po­lit­i­cal land­scape for T&T, with po­ten­tial shifts in par­ty lead­er­ship, is al­so a top­ic of in­ter­est, giv­en Row­ley’s past com­ments on his fu­ture po­lit­i­cal in­ten­tions. How­ev­er, there are al­so con­cerns about the geopo­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of Trump’s vic­to­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly since Row­ley has been crit­i­cal of Trump in the past.

In March 2024, Row­ley fa­mous­ly re­ferred to St Lu­cia’s Op­po­si­tion leader as “trop­i­cal Trump” in a scathing com­par­i­son. Row­ley had made the re­mark in ref­er­ence to Chas­tanet’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in an­ti-crime talks with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), and drew com­par­isons be­tween Chas­tanet’s un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous de­par­ture from of­fice and the con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure of Trump.