It didn’t take long af­ter John Je­re­mie, the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al in a pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment, an­nounced his al­le­giance to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for PNM mem­bers to la­bel him as in­con­se­quen­tial to their ef­forts to re­turn to pow­er on April 28.

The PNM’s ar­gu­ment is that Je­re­mie of­fers lit­tle to the elec­torate, hav­ing been away from pub­lic pol­i­tics for 15 years, and that he has an axe to grind against his for­mer par­ty for rea­sons known on­ly to them.

This, how­ev­er, is a re­ver­sal of roles, as the PNM was re­cent­ly ea­ger to pro­mote Lar­ry Lal­la’s shift from the UNC to their par­ty, while UNC mem­bers sug­gest­ed Lal­la’s de­ci­sion, and that of oth­ers be­fore him, was of lit­tle im­por­tance to them.

Par­ty switch­ing is a preva­lent trend in pol­i­tics.

Yet, his­tor­i­cal in­stances of such tran­si­tions have not sig­nif­i­cant­ly aid­ed par­ties in gain­ing new mem­bers; in­stead, they typ­i­cal­ly lead to a strong back­lash from the par­ty’s de­fend­ers, es­pe­cial­ly when a for­mer al­ly de­fects to the op­pos­ing camp.

These move­ments are of more form than sub­stance and on­ly lead the coun­try right back to the cen­tral ques­tion of how vot­ers per­ceive each par­ty’s abil­i­ty to ad­dress is­sues that are most sig­nif­i­cant to them.

Dur­ing his ad­dress at Mon­day’s UNC meet­ing, Je­re­mie asked a com­mon ques­tion, that is, whether his au­di­ence felt they were in a bet­ter po­si­tion to­day than they were ten years ago when the PNM re­gained con­trol from the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

This is the piv­otal ques­tion for all vot­ers, who must al­so con­sid­er which par­ty they be­lieve can de­liv­er the nec­es­sary changes in the next five years.

In a po­lit­i­cal­ly charged con­text, crit­ics of the Gov­ern­ment are like­ly to re­spond with a firm ‘no,’ in­di­cat­ing they do not feel bet­ter off now than a decade ago, while Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers will of­fer jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for its per­for­mance.

Nev­er­the­less, even those who main­tain an in­de­pen­dent stance and avoid as­sign­ing blame can agree that the cur­rent eco­nom­ic land­scape is less favourable than it was pre­vi­ous­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly due to di­min­ish­ing en­er­gy re­serves that af­fect rev­enue, a for­eign ex­change cri­sis im­pact­ing busi­ness­es and the av­er­age cit­i­zen, and the chal­lenge of im­ple­ment­ing ef­fec­tive di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion mea­sures.

These is­sues must there­fore be pri­ori­tised on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms, with lead­ers pro­vid­ing well-de­fined and prac­ti­cal plans to se­cure rev­enue streams and con­vince the pop­u­la­tion they are po­si­tioned to find macro­eco­nom­ic so­lu­tions that can ease the ‘bread and but­ter’ con­cerns, es­pe­cial­ly of the least for­tu­nate.

The pow­er­ful words of the late Leroy ‘Black Stal­in’ Cal­liste, in his ca­lyp­so ‘Suf­fer­ers’, res­onate to­day, re­mind­ing us that “suf­fer­ers don’t care who from coun­try, suf­fer­ers don’t care who from town, suf­fer­ers on­ly want to know, where the next food com­ing from.”

This serves as a re­minder that while po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions may be rel­e­vant in cam­paigns, they should not take prece­dence over the par­ties’ need to ad­dress the re­al is­sues at hand.

The lack of thor­ough ex­pla­na­tions on how these chal­lenges will be ad­dressed hin­ders un­de­cid­ed vot­ers from mak­ing in­formed choic­es on elec­tion day, which may con­tribute to the on­go­ing trend of low vot­er turnout as pub­lic dis­il­lu­sion­ment with par­ties con­tin­ues to rise.

As trib­al vot­ing trends be­come more en­trenched, in­de­pen­dent mem­bers of the elec­torate emerge as the vi­tal group that must be con­vinced, and while ef­fec­tive an­ti-crime and eco­nom­ic ini­tia­tives are like­ly to shape their per­spec­tives, ex­ces­sive fo­cus on who changes par­ty al­le­giances is hard­ly like­ly to have the same ef­fect.