The po­lit­i­cal cli­mate is heat­ing up, af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) yes­ter­day be­gan ef­forts to forge al­liances with small­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties and promi­nent trade unions to take on the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

The par­ties in­clude the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) led by Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der, the Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND) head­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas and the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).

The labour groups are the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU), Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers’ Union (TTP­WU) and the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (FSA).

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­vened sep­a­rate meet­ings with the groups ahead of screen­ing for five key con­stituen­cies—Ari­ma, Arou­ca/Mal­oney, D’Abadie/O’Meara, Lopinot/Bon Air West, and St Au­gus­tine—at the UNC’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas.

While the meet­ings were held in a stag­gered for­mat, Guardian Me­dia spoke with the groups dur­ing in­ter­mis­sion.

Tak­ing the spot­light, Per­sad-Bisses­sar high­light­ed the strength of the new coali­tion, in­sist­ing that it will be even “bet­ter than the 2010 Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship.”

“I think that this is bet­ter than what­ev­er hap­pened in 2010 be­cause we have more time to have fur­ther dis­cus­sions to en­sure that we put this coali­tion to­geth­er. I am rep­re­sent­ing it as a coali­tion of in­ter­ests, and we have many in­ter­ests here, the trade union move­ment, oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties and so we can bring all these to­geth­er,” she said.

Asked if she did not feel some peo­ple may be­lieve it is a re­hash of the PP, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “It will be bet­ter. This rounds I have greater ex­pe­ri­ence and many of us have more ex­pe­ri­ences, some of us worked to­geth­er be­fore and I think we can thrash out the ar­eas that we want to con­cen­trate on as we go for­ward.”

The UNC leader em­pha­sised that un­like the rushed cir­cum­stances of the 2010 elec­tion, where she had lit­tle time as a new­ly elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader to form al­liances with a snap elec­tion be­ing called, the cur­rent sce­nario al­lows for more de­lib­er­ate coali­tion-build­ing ef­forts.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­frained from com­mit­ting to whether the UNC would al­lo­cate any con­stituen­cies for its new part­ners to con­test.

JTUM leader An­cel Ro­get jus­ti­fied his union’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UNC, cit­ing wide­spread pub­lic suf­fer­ing as a press­ing con­cern.

“Every­where you go, peo­ple are suf­fer­ing, and the trade union move­ment, in­deed, the union that I lead, can­not ig­nore that call. What­ev­er it takes—and in this case, we feel that the on­ly vi­able so­lu­tion is for all of us to come to­geth­er and part­ner in the in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Ro­get stat­ed.

He fur­ther ques­tioned al­ter­na­tives to this part­ner­ship, ex­press­ing con­fi­dence in the UNC’s abil­i­ty to lead.

“Do you see an­oth­er op­tion? I am not at this time see­ing an­oth­er op­tion now, nor in the near fu­ture. There­fore, we are to give strength to the strength that we see in the UNC to en­sure that that par­ty forms the next gov­ern­ment in the in­ter­est of all of the peo­ple. The par­ty in gov­ern­ment now is in the in­ter­est of a few peo­ple, and that can­not work.”

Mean­while, COP in­ter­im leader Kirk Sin­nette ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the emerg­ing coali­tion. He em­pha­sised learn­ing from past ex­pe­ri­ences and ex­pressed will­ing­ness to work with the UNC de­spite his­tor­i­cal di­vi­sions.

“Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion what the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC said, she has learned, and we all have learned from our past and ex­pect to come and do some­thing dif­fer­ent here to­day,” Sin­nette re­marked.

While HOPE, led by Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, was ini­tial­ly list­ed as one of the par­ties to be in­volved in the talks, it was not present for yes­ter­day’s talks.

Con­tact­ed last evening, HOPE deputy leader Karen Nunez-Tesheira clar­i­fied that their ab­sence should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a de­ci­sion to dis­tance them­selves from the UNC. In­stead, she ex­plained that the ex­ec­u­tive had in­suf­fi­cient time to con­vene and de­lib­er­ate on the in­vi­ta­tion due to the short no­tice.

Coali­tions are not new to the UNC. The par­ty has a his­to­ry of al­liances, most no­tably the 2010 Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP), which in­clud­ed the COP, the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC), the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), and the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ).

The UNC it­self orig­i­nat­ed in 1988 as a break­away fac­tion of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR). Af­ter spend­ing six years in op­po­si­tion, the par­ty formed a coali­tion with the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) in 1995 (which won two seats) to se­cure gov­er­nance af­ter ty­ing 17-17 with the PNM. De­spite sub­se­quent splits and a nine-year stint in op­po­si­tion be­gin­ning in 2001, the UNC re­turned to pow­er in 2010 through the PP.