Not an easy choice on April 28

Paolo Kernahan

In just a few days, citizens will go to the polls and stain their fingers. I’ve never understood why we cling to this outdated ritual – the staining of the fingers bit, not the voting. Surely with the polling card, ID card and having your name checked against a list, this ink, which can be washed off with minimal effort, seems superfluous.

A hot cattle brand might be more appropriate – t can be forged in the shape of the new coat of arms.

This election will likely be decided by ordinary people pressured by economic/wage stagnation and unremitting crime. The outcome is probably going to be shaped by folks struggling to put food on the table, people finding it hard to keep their businesses afloat and fed up with living like prey animals out on the open savannah.

In TT, we are no strangers to razor-thin margins and hard-to-call electoral contests. This one however, feels particularly strained.

The challenge for the incumbent is to make it appear that the past isn’t prologue – that the sleight of hand by which Stuart Young was made prime minister, severed the party from the past ten years in office. It was a delicate balancing act, needing to claim successes over those two terms while at the same time unhitching itself from Keith Rowley’s legacy to project newness…something promissory.

This might explain Young’s bizarre platform rhetoric in which he acknowledged that the country, along with himself and the cabinet he leads, wants change. How can you see the need for change while championing the work of the government in which you played a key role for a decade? From one night to the next, that looked like some sort of psychic schism.

In the UNC camp, their rhetoric hinged largely on Oprah-esque promises that neither our finances nor prospects appear to support. When asked how these inducements would be honoured, UNC political leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar is quoted as dismissively saying, “We will find the money.”

That doesn’t exactly meet the standard of detail right-thinking people need to hear; but then, right-thinking people probably aren’t the core audience of the UNC (or the PNM for that matter). Given the party’s track record of fiscal irresponsibility, it can be argued that little has been said under the rising sun to demonstrate a marked departure from that history.

Moreover, the UNC finally purged members considered by the leadership to be insurrectionists. To outsiders, though, it looked more like an exercise in uprooting dissenting, intelligent voices in the party, leaving behind a cadre of submissives with no distinguishing qualities. None of that will matter to the die-hards, of course. But die-hards aren’t going to decide this election.

Given the compressed time frame, the resulting compressed emotions produced the predictable flaring of tempers. Mothballed racial tropes were aired out, ably abetted by politicians devoid of anything of real value to persuade audiences.

For voters who are lifelong supporters of one camp or another, their decision is easy. You have to envy people for whom such a seemingly momentous undertaking is little more than a reflex action.

Others burdened with higher brain function have to grapple with more considerations.

Economic uncertainty has become certainty, setting like concrete. Even before the catastrophic pandemic, the business landscape was in upheaval with several closing their doors, either due to declining fortunes or increasingly difficult access to forex, or both.

Violent crime has metastasised to a point where bridling it will take more effort than the authorities are prepared to invest. We know this because the state of emergency ended as it was predicted to – crime, which continued under this half-hearted measure, surged back to life in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. You might say it doesn’t get worse than a shooting at an international airport, but that’s tempting the fates.

Moreover, the world has become a more complicated place with Trumpism infecting the globe with a political pandemic. The victor in this election is going to have to contend with unprecedented internal and external challenges that demand experience, wisdom and open-mindedness.

It’s useful to bear in mind that for all the traits, beliefs and political allegiances that separate us, there are probably more factors that unite us. The majority of citizens, after the 28th, will have to go to the grocery and face high prices and then, God forbid, face bandits in the grocery parking lot. What you do and say after your vote matters far more than the vote itself.