I am one of the die hard ancients who believes that there are only two strong viable political parties in T&T. The Afro based Peoples National Movement (PNM) and the Indo based United National Congress (UNC). Both parties shared similar hardship under the old colonial masters. Fast forward to this political century, they both now exist in that beautiful area of realising that neither party can win an election without serious poaching on each others membership. All you need is the right combination of politically attractive ministers. But you also need sound political strategy and the belief that you can entice the electorate based on performance.
But after yet another sortie into the highly questionable strategy of calling for the resignation of front line ministers from the sitting Government, I am being made to look foolish. Is the UNC capable of putting up a credible fight in the general elections carded for 2025? In this Covid-19 era of life as we know it, the history books will show that which ever country did well in the pandemic, will be exalted.
Minister of National Security Stuart Young was inflexible in keeping the borders of T&T closed. He batted not an eyelid for alleged crocodile tears in the begging for exemptions. What does the word unpopular mean when performance falls under the word excellence? The history books do not care. Very few citizens died.
The Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, Franklin Khan, managed to strike the right balance to turn around mismanaged oil fortunes post a UNC-led government, 2010-2015. Just before and during the pandemic hard choices had to be made. Experience counted heavily with Khan and he excelled. Yet the UNC wasted precious time, between mere weeks, calling for these two resignations from these ministers.
The Opposition UNC badly needs a new strategy in order to inveigle new supporters to cross over to their party. Upon examination of facts the UNC, as a party, is self harming. The history books do not care about the fine print and name calling. Those words will not make it to the chroniclers of our political history.
What will be remembered, 100 years from now, is the fine print about who lived and who died and which country survived.
Political image is everything.
Lynette Joseph
Diego Martin
