AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

With the Gen­er­al Elec­tion just three weeks away, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj has dubbed this sea­son as the most his­toric, with 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties and 161 can­di­dates rac­ing to the fin­ish line.

How­ev­er, Ram­samooj be­lieves that some of the more pop­u­lar po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are still falling short in their na­tion­al cam­paigns, which can ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ram­samooj re­ferred to the 1976 gen­er­al elec­tion that al­so fea­tured nu­mer­ous par­ties. “All of these 17-odd com­pet­ing po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties would prob­a­bly re­sult in the PNM ben­e­fit­ting, de­pend­ing sole­ly on which con­stituen­cies we have mul­ti­ple par­ties, be­sides the tra­di­tion­al par­ties run­ning,” Ram­samooj said.

“If you look at St Joseph con­stituen­cy and if you look at per­haps Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy, if you have a split op­po­si­tion, whether big or small, then you have ben­e­fits to the PNM.” Aside from this, Ram­samooj said there are var­i­ous is­sues that po­lit­i­cal par­ties and their lead­ers should con­sid­er over the next few weeks.

With­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and its Coali­tion of In­ter­ests, com­pris­ing the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP), Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the LOVE par­ty, the UNC has 39 can­di­dates. But Ram­samooj said this coali­tion ap­pears to be self-serv­ing.

“A gen­uine coali­tion of in­ter­est can­not sim­ply be put to­geth­er in the height of a per­ceived elec­tion. It took the NAR, that we saw, at least one year from the ac­com­mo­da­tion agree­ment in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion be­fore they came to­geth­er in 1985 and then com­pet­ed in 1986. It had stronger po­lit­i­cal play­ers then, but that ac­com­mo­da­tion did not last a full term.” He be­lieves the coali­tion is an at­tempt by the UNC to gar­ner enough votes across the East-West cor­ri­dor and make up for its lack of vot­ers in To­ba­go.

While the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front has been laud­ed for con­test­ing 37 seats in its de­but, Ram­samooj said Mick­ela Pan­day not hav­ing a po­lit­i­cal brand and track record could lessen her par­ty’s chance of win­ning any seat. Last Fri­day, Pan­day filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for Cou­va North—the con­stituen­cy her late fa­ther, Bas­deo Pan­day, rep­re­sent­ed for 34 years.

Ram­samooj said the dif­fer­ence be­tween both in­di­vid­u­als is that for­mer prime min­is­ter Pan­day had a strong and lengthy track record serv­ing and work­ing on be­half of cit­i­zens. “Peo­ple know Bas­deo Pan­day. They know his style, but they al­so know Pan­day fought for cer­tain things in our so­ci­ety. And for nine years, you (Mick­ela) had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate your ca­pac­i­ty to pick a fight and win a fight. You were a mem­ber of par­lia­ment, and one will ques­tion, what was your leg­isla­tive agen­da? What did you put to Par­lia­ment that im­proved the qual­i­ty of life?”

He added that de­spite hav­ing a sim­i­lar style and ca­dence to her fa­ther, Mick­ela Pan­day hasn’t shown she has grown or at­tached her­self to a na­tion­al is­sue to win the ma­jor­i­ty of votes. Mean­while, Ram­samooj has praised Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance’s po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith’s stance to call out po­lit­i­cal par­ties on the ero­sion of ethics and morals, both on and off the po­lit­i­cal plat­form. How­ev­er, he said Grif­fith’s mes­sag­ing sole­ly fo­cus­es on his past achieve­ments and not a pro­posed vi­sion for the fu­ture.

“His cam­paign so far has been about ‘what I did, not what I will do.’ And I think in a place like St Joseph, where he’s con­test­ing, and we see that in Tu­na­puna, with the se­lec­tion of the UNC can­di­date, there is a prob­lem with so­ci­ety and safe­ty, and there­fore peo­ple are look­ing for so­lu­tions, not their his­tor­i­cal past be­cause even the gen­er­a­tion of crim­i­nal­i­ty has tak­en a dif­fer­ent lev­el.”