Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s “stand­by” word on gen­er­al elec­tions last Sun­day, has al­so sent a va­ri­ety of mes­sages, say Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith and Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der.

Dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Fam­i­ly Day on Sun­day, Row­ley said he was pleased with the turnout and asked PN­Mites to “stand by and wait for the call be­cause, in the mid­dle of the night, the dawn may not be too far away ... when­ev­er they are ready, THA elec­tion, by-elec­tion, gen­er­al elec­tion, we’ll beat them!”

Mooni­lal said, “The leader of the PNM is sim­ply putting his charges on alert for the in­evitable. I sus­pect he sens­es that the PNM is be­hind and needs to catch up.”

“This is why there is an em­pha­sis on talk­ing about so-called ‘achieve­ments’. But this is a des­per­ate bid to fool the elec­torate that will not work. The Labour Day mes­sage was clear,” Mooni­lal added, ref­er­enc­ing Labour Day state­ments from some labour lead­ers.

Grif­fith said he thought Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment showed po­lit­i­cal im­ma­tu­ri­ty, “... To play this game ... and hav­ing the date ‘in his back pock­et’ to tease vot­ers and put the whole coun­try on elec­tion alert and he alone must make that de­ci­sion, as he has the con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to do so. You’re putting the whole coun­try on elec­tion alert and you may very well not call it un­til this time so next year or even to­mor­row.”

“It shows the im­por­tance to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to stop this type of pa­thet­ic dis­play by politi­cians hold­ing dates over T&T’s head in the hope you can pick up some trac­tion to as­cer­tain when you should ac­tu­al­ly have the elec­tion,” he added.

Grif­fith felt Row­ley was “be­tween a rock and a hard place,” as some may be ad­vis­ing him to call an ear­ly elec­tion be­cause the UNC is present­ly di­vid­ed, with the Rush­ton Paray fac­tion and al­so with the “mas­sive in­flu­ence Jear­lean John has on Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar,” in try­ing to in­flu­ence her the that UNC must con­test alone.

He spec­u­lat­ed on if Row­ley might al­so be con­cerned about call­ing the elec­tion ear­ly—as late PNM leader Patrick Man­ning did and lost—or be­cause he didn’t know if NTA’s “bridge” vot­ers might have an al­liance with the UNC. He felt Row­ley’s state­ment was a “dog whis­tle to see how much sup­port he could ac­tu­al­ly have if he de­cid­ed to call an elec­tion late this year.”

“But if he makes it, it’ll be the biggest mis­take of his life,” said Grif­fith.

PEP’s Alexan­der said, “Kei­th Row­ley look­ing for the dawn in the mid­dle of the night epit­o­mis­es how lost at sea he and his Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly is.”

“The dis­ar­ray in the op­pos­ing camps is giv­ing him com­fort, and like every­one else, we’re await­ing a sig­nal from the cur­rent ma­jor play­er in the op­pos­ing ranks, but if they don’t get their act to­geth­er and con­tin­ue to frac­ture at the rate they are go­ing, we’ll all hand an elec­tion that they by all rights and rea­son should lose, to the PNM.”

He added, “Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has to be hear­ing the tick­ing of the clock. There is no way she sur­vives los­ing the next elec­tion, the UNC would ex­plode in­to fac­tions that would make the COP break look like child’s play and would take decades to unite. She has in her hands more pow­er than Row­ley has in his, the pow­er to unite a com­plete­ly dis­en­chant­ed na­tion that would sweep the PNM in­to loss­es like 1986 and 2010. She needs to show lead­er­ship and con­vene uni­ty talks with every­one.”

Alexan­der added, “If the UNC at­tempts it alone, they lose. All the third par­ties to­geth­er in a three-way race hands PNM vic­to­ry. There’s on­ly one so­lu­tion—we all need to put egos and past hurts aside like Row­ley and Colm did, like Amery Browne and Row­ley did, like Pen­ny Beck­les and Row­ley did, and unite for T&T’s good. Any­thing else is chaos, and we’d be salt­ing the fields for gen­er­a­tions to come.”