Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and UWI Prof Hamid Ghany has weighed in on the heat­ed po­lit­i­cal rhetoric ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tion, stat­ing that the re­al is­sue at play is class, not race.

Dr Ghany’s com­ments come in re­sponse to re­cent state­ments made by PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of us­ing “black men and black girls” to ad­vance its cam­paign agen­da.

Prime Min­is­ter Young ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to stand unit­ed against what he de­scribed as a dan­ger­ous wave of po­lit­i­cal in­tim­i­da­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and racial­ly charged cam­paign­ing ahead of the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Speak­ing to sup­port­ers at the PNM’s po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Croisee, San Juan, on Fri­day, Young de­tailed a re­cent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a long-time Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­er from East Port-of-Spain, who was al­leged­ly at­tacked by a paid Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­tivist.

The sup­port­er and his wife, dressed in PNM cloth­ing, were re­turn­ing home from a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing when the as­sault re­port­ed­ly oc­curred.

“A staunch young sup­port­er who has stood at my side for the last ten years was at­tacked by a paid UNC ac­tivist,” Young stat­ed. “That, Trinidad and To­ba­go, is crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

He ex­pressed grave con­cern over what he called an or­ches­trat­ed cam­paign tar­get­ing “black men and black girls” to sow di­vi­sion and un­rest.

Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al calls and sent What­sApp mes­sages to the UNC, but the par­ty did not re­spond to these al­le­ga­tions up to late yes­ter­day.

“I don’t think this elec­tion is about race,” Dr Ghany said in a re­cent in­ter­view. “This elec­tion is about class.

And class is­sues tend to cut across eth­nic and racial bound­aries.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that po­lit­i­cal par­ties of­ten make claims re­lat­ed to race, Dr Ghany not­ed that such nar­ra­tives have not been a cen­tral fea­ture of the cam­paign un­til now. In­stead, he ob­served a grow­ing di­vide be­tween work­ing-class con­cerns and priv­i­leged back­grounds.

“There’s a con­trast be­tween work­ing-class is­sues on the one hand and the ques­tion of priv­i­lege on the oth­er. That class dy­nam­ic is very much in play and may be a dom­i­nant fea­ture in this elec­tion in a way we haven’t seen be­fore,” he ex­plained.

Dr Ghany al­so ad­dressed the Prime Min­is­ter’s claim that one of his sup­port­ers was ver­bal­ly as­sault­ed by a UNC mem­ber. He said such in­ci­dents are com­mon dur­ing elec­tion sea­son and of­ten am­pli­fied by so­cial me­dia.

“These kinds of sin­gle, anec­do­tal al­le­ga­tions hap­pen in every elec­tion,” he said. “What’s dif­fer­ent now is the speed and scale of how so­cial me­dia spreads these events. But both par­ties have com­plaints, and they all add to the usu­al elec­tion at­mos­phere.”

He fur­ther warned that the rise of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and bots is con­tribut­ing to a dig­i­tal fog, mak­ing it hard­er for vot­ers to dis­tin­guish truth from mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“With all the con­tent cir­cu­lat­ing on­line—some of it cre­at­ed by AI—it’s more chal­leng­ing than ever for the av­er­age vot­er to sift through what’s re­al and what’s not,” Dr Ghany not­ed. “But at the end of the day, it’s go­ing to come down to ground mo­bil­i­sa­tion and vot­er turnout.”

De­spite the ris­ing po­lit­i­cal ten­sions, Dr Ghany main­tains that the fo­cus must re­main on the re­al so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues fac­ing the elec­torate. “This isn’t just about race-bait­ing or po­lit­i­cal the­atrics. The deep­er ques­tion is, who rep­re­sents the in­ter­ests of the work­ing class in a mean­ing­ful way?”

Mean­while, yes­ter­day the PNM ad­vised the pub­lic that “the Face­book page ‘Re­dRea­dyn­Re­spon­si­ble’ is not af­fil­i­at­ed with, en­dorsed by or of­fi­cial­ly con­nect­ed to the PNM in any way.”

The par­ty stat­ed the post­ings on that page “do not rep­re­sent the of­fi­cial po­si­tion or com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the PNM.”