Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

With the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion less than two weeks away, so far, the All Peo­ple’s Par­ty (APP) is the on­ly par­ty to re­lease a full man­i­festo in its tra­di­tion­al sense.

One po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst be­lieves this is a sign of “po­lit­i­cal lazi­ness” on the part of lead­ers and par­ty ex­ec­u­tives.

APP leader Kezel Jack­son yes­ter­day said their man­i­festo was made pub­lic on April 2. The APP has a 16-point plan for the coun­try, which in­cludes in­creas­ing pub­lic sec­tor work­ers’ salaries, ful­ly le­gal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na, a cit­i­zen­ship by in­vest­ment pro­gramme and im­ple­ment­ing a dig­i­tal health­care sys­tem.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has re­vealed half of its man­i­festo so far, with the re­main­ing poli­cies to be rolled out in the com­ing week.

“There are quite a few oth­er pieces that will come out for the rest of the week. There are nine pieces in all. The oth­ers will come out soon. We are try­ing to time it, to build on ex­pec­ta­tions,” said UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo.

Tan­coo said soon, the par­ty’s poli­cies on the econ­o­my and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment will be re­vealed.

On the UNC’s web­site, it has pub­lished plans for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) yes­ter­day an­nounced that its man­i­festo will be re­leased to­day. PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, in a re­lease, said the man­i­festo will be un­veiled at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain.

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) is al­so ex­pect­ed to an­nounce its poli­cies to­day at a ral­ly in San­gre Grande. How­ev­er, leader Gary Grif­fith said he’s not call­ing it a man­i­festo but “a roadmap to­wards trans­for­ma­tion.”

“A man­i­festo for the last 60 years in this coun­try has been noth­ing more than a pack of lies and emp­ty promis­es with­out any re­search, cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, da­ta or any as­pect to jus­ti­fy the in­ten­tion and de­mand. This means it is nev­er im­ple­ment­ed and if it is, it is done with­out any ac­cess to un­der­stand how it is you are go­ing to gen­er­ate rev­enue to off­set the added ex­pen­di­ture.”

Mick­ela Pan­day said the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front’s (PF) man­i­festo will be re­leased on April 21.

In To­ba­go, the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) said its plans are com­ing soon.

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP)’s leader Wat­son Duke has al­ready launched his man­i­festo, but said it was done in spo­ken word.

“In all of our meet­ings, we go through the as­pects of our man­i­festo. We don’t try to be ex­haus­tive; we try to be rel­e­vant and speak of the things that are most im­por­tant to the peo­ple at this point in time,” Duke said.

‘Lack of po­lit­i­cal acu­men’

Com­ment­ing on the slow roll­out of man­i­festos, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj un­der­scored their im­por­tance.

“I be­lieve man­i­festos are an in­te­gral part in the po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion mak­ing es­pe­cial­ly with re­spect to the un­de­cid­ed, swing vot­ers and first-time vot­ers.”

On their slow­ness in com­ing, he said, “Let’s clear­ly recog­nise the fact that there is a lev­el of po­lit­i­cal lazi­ness by the lead­er­ship of the dif­fer­ent par­ties. It could be be­cause they lack the po­lit­i­cal acu­men or po­lit­i­cal in­tel­lec­tu­al­ism to cre­ate new eco­nom­ic spaces that will pro­vide eco­nom­ic em­ploy­ment, growth in the econ­o­my as well as to deal with the so­cial agen­da such as safe­ty in our com­mu­ni­ties.”

Asked if the late re­veal is a po­lit­i­cal tac­tic, Ram­samooj said, “I think the strat­e­gy of tick­ing the box­es of hav­ing pre­sent­ed a doc­u­ment as op­posed to be­ing able to ex­am­ine the va­lid­i­ty and the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of the doc­u­ment is a po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.”

How­ev­er, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon be­lieves de­layed man­i­festos has more to do with dom­i­nat­ing news cy­cles.

“By re­leas­ing their man­i­festos clos­er to the elec­tion, they hope to en­sure that their mes­sag­ing and poli­cies dom­i­nate the head­lines in the crit­i­cal fi­nal days of the cam­paign and that the con­tent re­mains fresh in vot­ers’ minds as they head to the polls. It al­so leaves less time for po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents to scru­ti­nize its con­tents,” he said.