The April Poui blos­soms are syn­ony­mous with East­er and the prox­im­i­ty of ex­ams. This year, East­er co­in­cides with the Jew­ish Passover and close­ly fol­lows the month of Ra­madan. Fast­ing, in­tro­spec­tion and prayer are syn­ony­mous in these re­li­gions. In Ju­daism, the Passover rep­re­sents lib­er­a­tion from slav­ery. For Chris­tians, East­er rep­re­sents a re­birth or re­gen­er­a­tion, the promise of eter­nal life and a spir­it of broth­er­ly love on earth.

These re­li­gious events have co­in­cid­ed with the Gen­er­al Elec­tion pe­ri­od. The con­test for po­lit­i­cal of­fice does not evoke the spir­it of broth­er­ly love or tol­er­ance on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms. In­vari­ably, po­lit­i­cal plat­form rhetoric of­ten de­gen­er­ates and does not of­ten in­voke our high­er call­ing or in­vite cit­i­zens to a stronger sense of na­tion­al pur­pose and sense of du­ty. Who­ev­er wins the elec­tion will need to wear the na­tion­al colours, red, white and black.

Sec­tion 4 of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­sti­tu­tion en­shrines the rights and free­doms that are to be en­joyed by all cit­i­zens re­gard­less of race, ori­gin, re­li­gion, colour, or sex. These rights in­clude the right to join po­lit­i­cal par­ties and to ex­press po­lit­i­cal views; free­dom of con­science and re­li­gious be­lief and ob­ser­vance; free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion; free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion and ex­pres­sion; and free­dom of the press. Sec­tion 5 fur­ther ar­tic­u­lates these rights and their pro­tec­tion.

Every­one is free to make their po­lit­i­cal choice. Nor should they have to de­fend those choic­es. Lar­ry Lal­la is en­ti­tled to join whichev­er plat­form he choos­es, as is John Je­re­mie, re­gard­less of how up­set­ting it is to mem­bers of the re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Their choic­es as in­di­vid­u­als ought to be re­spect­ed on pub­lic plat­forms, and they ought not to be sub­ject­ed to ver­bal abuse, in­vec­tive or in­nu­en­do that have ac­com­pa­nied their very pub­lic “cross­ing of the floor”.

These ac­tions are not with­out prece­dent. For­mer pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son not on­ly de­fect­ed from the PNM but al­so formed an al­liance with the DLP in 1971 and even­tu­al­ly came to the Of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter in 1986, lead­ing the NAR, a part­ner­ship with the ULF, and al­most wiped the PNM off the elec­toral map.

Sel­wyn Richard­son de­sert­ed the PNM to en­dorse the NAR on the hus­tings and be­came a min­is­ter in the NAR gov­ern­ment. Ralph Maraj, Ru­pert Grif­fith and Vin­cent Lasse were PNM min­is­ters be­fore break­ing up with Man­ning and mov­ing to the UNC. Sim­i­lar­ly, the cur­rent ranks of the PNM con­tain UNC de­fec­tors.

Po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty de­pends on many fac­tors, in­clud­ing per­son­al re­la­tion­ships, agree­ment with the par­ty’s poli­cies and per­son­al am­bi­tion. Dif­fer­ences will al­ways arise. What mat­ters is how those dif­fer­ences are ac­com­mo­dat­ed. A few months ago, it was not clear that Stu­art Young en­joyed the sup­port of all his par­lia­men­tary col­leagues. Sim­i­lar­ly, there were dif­fer­ences in the UNC, and five mem­bers of the par­ty called for changes in the par­ty’s lead­er­ship. All five were ei­ther ex­clud­ed from the line­up to con­test the 2025 elec­toral cam­paign or left be­fore be­ing pushed.

A key ques­tion unasked, and there­fore unan­swered, is why has it been so easy for some to change par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion? Is it be­cause there is lit­tle to dis­tin­guish be­tween the poli­cies pro­mot­ed by dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ties? Is it be­cause race is no longer a key dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing fac­tor be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties? Does per­son­al an­i­mos­i­ty play a key role?

To date, the on­ly dif­fer­ences be­tween the ma­jor par­ties seem to be in the fi­nan­cial promis­es made on the hus­tings, promis­es that nei­ther the UNC nor the PNM can ful­fil with the ex­ist­ing rev­enue base.