The Mickela factor

Paolo Kernahan

“DE Patriotic Front is ah PNM front to split de vote!”

Trinis are such strange organisms. We moan about incompetence, backwardness and stagnancy in the PNM and UNC. Still, we work obeah against so-called "third force politics," deriding them as spoilers, grifters and neophytes.

Consequently, we’re stuck with the trilobites who keep this nation trapped in the amber of stalled potential.

Mickela Panday and her Patriot Front (PF) are catching a lot of flack for, well, contesting the election. Panday seemingly came out of nowhere, in the opinion of many online analysts – even though she was a Member of Parliament for Oropouche West. Even if we were to accept that the junior Panday is a relative nobody, Trinidad was prepared to accept an overnight oats prime minister without so much as a meow.

Panday’s Patriotic Front has been dismissed as a Trojan horse for the PNM – the same venerable institution that persecuted her father. That would make her the moral equivalent of plasticine. It’s a hard sell, to my mind.

She has also been accused of riding the coat-tails of her father – her father was Basdeo Panday. Whose coat-tails should she ride…Ted Bundy? What’s interesting is that Brian Manning, himself the son of a former PM, doesn’t attract the same scrutiny; but then Manning’s words never forked any lightning so he is spared the attention lavished on Mickela Panday.

The PF is said to be led by a woman without leadership experience. The same could be said of Stuart Young, who fancies himself experienced enough to lead the country. The famous Thanos quip comes to mind, "Well if you consider failure experience…"

I’ve been following Panday’s interviews and speeches, and I’ve seen and heard astuteness, acumen, and skill of expression absent on the two main political "flatforms."

In stark contrast to the PNM and UNC with their colossal digital backdrops, sea of flags and be-jerseyed phalanxes of supporters, Panday presented her candidates in a borrowed union office. Shame she couldn’t squeeze more money out of her supposed PNM financiers to afford something a little more swank – like the Himal-ya Club.

While PNM and UNC candidates filed the nomination papers chipping behind music trucks and troops of tassa drummers, Panday showed up for the formality sans spectacle. Her’s was an entirely stripped-down public appearance that, by comparison, made the other parties' J’Ouvert-fied antics practically farcical.

The fact that the Patriotic Front is stirring so much enmity suggests that Panday presents a credible threat to those enamoured of the status quo. As the saying goes, you don’t throw stone at green mango. Or is it, "Meh trow stone…upon meh buddy head?" I can’t quite recall.

Doubting Thomases and Thomasinas have been asking what she’s been doing for her country over the past 15 years. Well, for one thing, she wasn’t a member of Parliament enjoying the salaries, perks and privileges for which others were paid but did nothing but contribute to climate change with a steady profusion of hot air. Curiously, some citizens place a higher burden of measuring up on Panday than the slackers for whom they actually voted.

Another accusation routinely lobbed at the Patriotic Front is that the party will split the vote. To the UNC diehards who peddle this notion, Panday asks a good question: Who split the vote in 2015 and 2020? That's right, through hard work and sacrifice, Kamla Persad-Bissessar lost those elections with no help from anyone else. If either the PNM or UNC founder at the polls, they don’t get to share credit for their defeat with anyone else.

This isn’t about whether Mickela Panday and the PF can win this election. A considerable proportion of registered voters traditionally can’t be ar--d with staining their fingers, for various reasons. The younger Panday, though, has a shot at starting a shift in our political culture. Her narrative, such as I’ve seen so far, is a dramatic departure from the Henry Street-hawker rhetoric coming from the PNM and UNC – she isn’t pushing unrealistic promises trying to bamboozle a desperate public.

If Mickela can win just one seat – the seat she’s contesting – a victory can upend the dynamics of politics that have kept us in this death spiral with two parties that are slightly different versions of each other. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result. If fighting down Panday and her candidates makes more sense than turning our backs on proven disappointments, then madness will prevail.