Can UNC win any friends?

THE EDITOR: Surely Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) may be useful for an opposition party that is moving from own goal to own goal and doing worse that the cricketers. Does the opposition need political advice like humans need to breathe air?

Does the UNC care or understand the importance of Caricom? If a political party is seriously hoping to win general election 2025, surely one could put on a pleasant smiling face for the Caricom membership?

A hopefully future UNC government will have to deal with Caricom leaders. Why behave as if there is a waft of dirty air around Caricom?

Plain talking is not bad manners. Can the UNC even dream to be capable and sophisticated at hosting important political meetings involving several political entities?

Caricom is now 50 years old and counting. Does the UNC see the importance of collaboration in a world still suffering the results of covid19, severe climate change and the horrors of the war in Ukraine?

All is fair in love, war and politics. Denigrating the opponent is par for the course. One expects the PNM government to be described as incompetent, badly mismanaged and all manner of awful negative things, but if 2010-2015 had been perfect, we would not be having this particular conversation?

Knowledge is power. All that is heard after each important symposium are remarks regarding pricing for each plate of food and drink that a participant consumed.

In successful political negotiations you have to be competent enough to walk the walk and talk the talk.

The influential visitors from Caricom and the US do not view TT as backward and incompetent. They are not bitterly jealous opponents. They admire the PNM and the Prime Minister. And why not?

Political beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Who will widen the eyes of the UNC?

Two years from now these very same Caricom leaders may still be in power in their individual countries. Who will forget and forgive deliberate snobbery?

And, as we say in local parlance, none of them bong to talk to all yuh.

LYNETTE JOSEPH

Diego Martin