Dr Win­ford James said the PNM lost the elec­tion be­cause of “a bul­ly of a PM”. The PNM had re­cy­cled “old, tired PNM pol­i­tics to at­tract the elec­torate”, and the elec­torate did not re­spond to the “de­mon­i­sa­tion of Far­ley and Wat­son”.

Well, we have wit­nessed those two lead­ers de­mon­is­ing each oth­er, ques­tion­able fis­cal man­age­ment, and leaked vo­cal record­ings which show things have not changed. It is a far cry from what Au­gus­tine said in his vic­to­ry speech on elec­tion night “We can­not be­have like those we re­placed tonight, we have to do bet­ter, we are re­quired to do bet­ter, the stan­dard is high­er for us and it is im­por­tant that that stan­dard be raised high enough that even our friends and fam­i­ly in Trinidad could look on and be­gin to en­vy what we can ac­com­plish in our small democ­ra­cy.”

The say­ing, ‘two bo rat cyah live in de same hole’ is a known re­al­i­ty.

Williams had his day with ANR Robin­son and lat­er Karl Hud­son-Phillips. Bas­deo Pan­day had Raf­fique Shah and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj.

De­spite Wat­son Duke hav­ing sex­u­al as­sault and rape charges hang­ing over his head, he was still able to get wide­spread elec­toral sup­port to win his seat.

From day one of vic­to­ry, Mr Au­gus­tine had to clar­i­fy state­ments that  Wat­son Duke nev­er promised to ‘just open beach’, af­ter Duke de­clared one of the par­ty’s first acts would be to re­open the beach­es. On Duke’s pre­vi­ous call for in­de­pen­dence, Au­gus­tine said, “You know what Mr Duke was say­ing was ‘look, we have been beg­ging for this au­ton­o­my, maybe we should ask for in­de­pen­dence and maybe we will fi­nal­ly get the au­ton­o­my’.’’

The PDP did not have their di­a­logue on the same page. They need­ed a clear pol­i­cy of one spokesman for the par­ty. Both PDP lead­ers have dif­fer­ent styles–the flam­boy­ant Mr Duke, and the in­tel­lec­tu­al Au­gus­tine.

To­ba­go would have been clos­er to self-rule if per­son­al­i­ties did not get in the way.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion ex­ists in Scot­land where the Mus­lim first min­is­ter Humza Yousaf has been left try­ing to achieve Scot­tish in­de­pen­dence from the UK.

This son of Pak­istani im­mi­grants in Glas­gow worked as a par­lia­men­tary as­sis­tant for both Alex Salmond and Nico­la Stur­geon, two pre­vi­ous lead­ers of his par­ty and gov­ern­ment, who are now at log­ger­heads with each oth­er.

Stur­geon and her hus­band were re­cent­ly ar­rest­ed for par­ty fi­nances mis­spending while Salmond was ar­rest­ed for sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and at­tempt­ed rape charges in the past.

Salmond and Stur­geon used to be the team on which Scot­tish Na­tion­al Par­ty (SNP) elec­tions were won. Salmond led the SNP to vic­to­ry in 2007 and Stur­geon was his tal­ent­ed deputy. He was her men­tor and she was his pro­tege.

He sup­port­ed her to as­sume lead­er­ship af­ter the gov­ern­ment’s 2014 ref­er­en­dum loss. He stepped aside, giv­ing her this po­si­tion.

Their re­la­tion­ship fell apart af­ter he blamed peo­ple around her for the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his at­tempt­ed rape and sex­u­al as­sault tri­al. He al­leged politi­cians were in­flu­enc­ing the po­lice in their ac­tion to take him down.

Salmond was ac­quit­ted in the High Court. He quit the SNP, formed the Al­ba Par­ty, and set about try­ing to de­stroy Stur­geon and the small clique around her who he be­lieved tried to bring him down.

While Scots should have been con­cen­trat­ing on a unit­ed front to fight for their lib­er­a­tion from the UK, they seemed to have politi­cians in­volved in in­ter­nal pow­er strug­gles, al­le­ga­tions of fraud, and sex­u­al mis­con­duct.

Rape charges, al­le­ga­tions of be­ing set up, ac­ri­mo­ny be­tween a pre­vi­ous leader and deputy leader, for­ma­tion of a new par­ty, al­le­ga­tions of po­lice con­trol, fraud charges, it sounds so fa­mil­iar 4,370 miles away.

It shows po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour or mis­be­hav­iour is uni­ver­sal.

We seem to put too much hope on our lead­ers to do the cor­rect thing.

We need to put and main­tain laws in place to make it dif­fi­cult for laps­es. Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life leg­is­la­tion, FIU leg­is­la­tion, cam­paign fi­nanc­ing, whistle­blow­er leg­is­la­tion, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, and even a code of con­duct are all vi­tal tools to pro­tect our democ­ra­cy and cit­i­zens from politi­cians.

Our Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and the Ju­di­cia­ry need to be im­par­tial guardians of our cit­i­zen­ry.

An in­de­pen­dent fourth es­tate is vi­tal to democ­ra­cy. Peo­ple must learn how to de­ci­pher through the so­cial me­dia spin doc­tors and false­hoods com­ing from the lips of politi­cians far and wide. Po­lit­i­cal sil­ly sea­son has be­gun where un­de­liv­er­able promis­es and wild ac­cu­sa­tions are the or­der of the day

We must re­mem­ber there is a priv­i­lege and pow­er in the right to vote.