By the time of the elections in Trinidad and Tobago, great tension lay across the land. A candidate from the new third party challenger, the COP, had been beaten and hospitalized and a volunteer shot in the People’s National Movement (PNM) urban heartland and ghettoized community of Laventille. The television, print and radio blitzkrieg of ads and songs had completely absorbed the landscape. Like gang leaders, both female and male politicians were viciously and violently promising to “flog”, “beat to a frazzle”, “eat raw” and “crush” their opponents over turf. Meanwhile, daily reports of murders and violent robberies continued unabated.
In the end, the COP did not win a single seat. The PNM took 26 of 41 seats, and the UNC 15. However, it won almost 150 000 votes in comparison to the UNC’s 190 000 and the PNM’s almost 300 000, suggesting as in the 1981 election, dissatisfaction with the older parties was wide, but too thinly spread. The PNM actually won fewer votes than in 2002 and only attracted 46% of the electorate. In fact, more people voted against the new government than for it. The UNC won 30% of the vote and the COP 23%. While the UNC lost only one of its seats, it also lost over 30% of its support since 2002.
The UNC blamed the COP for its poor showing. A vote for the COP, it told supporters, was a vote for the PNM. Though this logic was based on a variety of mistaken assumptions, at some level it was true. Four of 10 or 11 “swing” constituencies that decided the election and where margins of victory were close, were previously held by the UNC. It lost them because the COP and UNC appealed to similar blocs and split the possible votes each could get, allowing the PNM to slide in above the fray.
At the same time, however, political observers had to acknowledge the impact of constituency boundary changes on the election. In 2004, the Elections and Boundaries Commission created four new seats and reconstituted the boundaries of all but one constituency. A glance at the Elections and Boundaries Commission Report showed that UNC-leaning polling divisions were moved from – while PNM-leaning polling divisions were moved into – a couple of the key or marginal constituencies. In one startling example, the constituency of Chaguanas, which the UNC won since 1991 by a ratio of 4:1 over the PNM, was divided in two. In the new Chaguanas East constituency, less than 2000 votes or an almost 1:1 ratio now separated the parties. With the split votes an additional factor, it also fell to the PNM. Neither in 2004 nor in the 2007 campaign period was there significant public discussion of the implications of the Boundary Report, despite its clear signals and almost prophetic picture of the election turnout.
The ruling party spent over TT$200 billion in the last five years and, given the price of gas and oil, is set to up its budgets. It has provided free tertiary education, expanded tertiary-level options, subsidized many vocational programmes and continued necessary spending on welfare, though in ways often interlocked with patronage. The Minister of National Security who presided over an unprecedented leap in violent deaths, crimes and kidnappings has been reinstated. Notably, almost a dozen women hold powerful Ministerial or Parliamentary posts, including the PM’s wife. There are big plans to expand Prime Ministerial power through constitutional reform, but this will be hard to achieve without greater governmental control of Parliament. Nonetheless, proposals for an ‘Executive President’ hardly include an acknowledgement that Trinidad and Tobago also needs to discuss the option of a combined first past the post and proportional representation system. Something has to be seen as wrong when the representatives of 340 000 votes can only quarrel from Opposition benches or be left out cold because they could not seize a seat. This remains the legacy of our political system, and one most leaders in power are loathe to change.
We are also going to see massive investment in a high-speed railway, increased reliance on non-renewable resource extraction, and even a new island in the fish-nesting Gulf of Paria for one of three planned aluminum smelters. Yet, for ordinary citizens, the justice, education, transport and health systems remain in utter shambles. Food is becoming increasingly expensive and working people remain hardest hit in what we are told is a booming economy. The UNC remains unable to seize national confidence at this moment and the COP’s future is completely uncertain. Many analysts say that both ‘race’ and our first past the post electoral arrangement remain key determinants of elections, entrenching ethnic competition in a winner takes all system. From these observations, we are anxiously but hopefully turning to gaze toward our nation’s future over the next five years.
