Gail Alexan­der

& Da­reece Po­lo

UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not rul­ing out a De­cem­ber elec­tion date.

Dur­ing a UNC town hall meet­ing at the Na­pari­ma Au­di­to­ri­um on Mon­day evening, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while a gen­er­al elec­tion will not be held on De­cem­ber 9, a de­ci­sion on a pos­si­ble De­cem­ber 16 elec­tion date could be made by next week­end.

She told the au­di­ence, “I can give you one as­sur­ance: there will be no De­cem­ber 9th elec­tion.”

In re­cent months, there has been on­go­ing spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing the date of the elec­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “I’ll tell you by this week­end whether there’ll be a De­cem­ber 16th elec­tion. So for the mo­ment, all the ru­mours and the buzz on De­cem­ber 9th, tonight, I tell you there will be no De­cem­ber 9th elec­tion be­cause ac­cord­ing to the law, there are cer­tain pro­ce­dures that have to be fol­lowed (but) they have not yet been fol­lowed.

“So by this week­end you’ll know if we’ll have a Mer­ry Christ­mas or whether we’ll have a sad Christ­mas—we’ll let you know how that date goes.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments may have been an in­di­rect ref­er­ence to the elec­tion reg­u­la­tion that an elec­tion can be held at a min­i­mum of five weeks af­ter a date is an­nounced.

If the elec­tion was to be held on De­cem­ber 9, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would have had to have made the an­nounce­ment, and the Pres­i­dent would have dis­solved Par­lia­ment with the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion pub­lish­ing the elec­tion writ on No­vem­ber 11, Mon­day. That date has come and gone.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have poured cold wa­ter on the UNC leader’s es­ti­ma­tion re­gard­ing a De­cem­ber elec­tion date.

An­a­lysts weigh in

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj dis­missed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s spec­u­la­tion.

“One can eas­i­ly con­clude that there is a vac­u­um of po­lit­i­cal in­tel­li­gence ex­pressed clear­ly by a po­lit­i­cal leader, who is suf­fer­ing po­lit­i­cal fa­tigue. The pop­u­la­tion needs to hear clear­ly de­fined plans and poli­cies if you’re en­ter­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. The his­to­ry sug­gests that on De­cem­ber 16, 1986, the PNM suf­fered its largest elec­toral de­feat with the re­moval of the PNM from the gov­ern­ment by the NAR. So, De­cem­ber is not the best po­lit­i­cal time when you look at the his­to­ry of elec­tions that led to a PNM de­feat.

“Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has her own in­ter­nal bat­tles and is po­lit­i­cal­ly strug­gling to keep the at­ten­tion of the elec­torate—not on­ly her base but the un­de­cid­ed vot­ers. When you con­sid­er the crises that face this coun­try fi­nan­cial­ly as well as with re­spect to crime, there are many more press­ing po­lit­i­cal is­sues than po­lit­i­cal spec­u­la­tion by lead­er­ship that is suf­fer­ing from po­lit­i­cal cataract,” Ram­samooj said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath was doubt­ful the gen­er­al elec­tion, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in 2025, would be held this year.

“I think we’ve passed the time lim­it for 35 days. So, clear­ly, the elec­tion is not go­ing to be held this year. If we’re go­ing to go in­to next year, if they’re go­ing to have it from the sec­ond half of Jan­u­ary, that could be a pos­si­ble elec­tion date, as well as, if not then, the sec­ond half of March on­wards, giv­ing Car­ni­val time to fin­ish and two weeks to cam­paign heav­i­ly af­ter Car­ni­val,” he said.  

But Ra­goonath ques­tioned why the UNC leader would want a De­cem­ber elec­tion.

“One would think that the UNC has been bet­ting on the fact that there would not be an elec­tion this year. As of yes­ter­day, we lit­er­al­ly wrote off 2024 as an elec­tion year, so clear­ly, they are work­ing to­wards the no­tion that the elec­tion would be held some time in 2025. When in 2025, that would be re­al­ly up to the prime min­is­ter to de­cide,” he added.

On­ly on Mon­day, Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles and Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray ques­tioned when the UNC would be­gin screen­ing gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the process had start­ed and was more than just the in-per­son screen­ing.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has al­ready se­lect­ed can­di­dates for con­stituen­cies held by the UNC and has set aside De­cem­ber 2 to com­plete screen­ing for 15 more seats.