Trinidad and Tobago’s opposition party and its coalition partners got an unexpected boost last week when Britain ended up with its own coalition government, the first since World War II, following their elections last week which resulted in a hung Parliament.
Over the past few weeks, the United National Congress (UNC) and its partners, including the Congress of the People (COP), in Trinidad and Tobago have found themselves defending their coalition against criticisms from the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) headed by its political leader Prime Minister Patrick Manning, also the country’s prime minister.
Mr. Manning, who called the May 24 snap general elections midway in his five-year term in office, has been warning the population against voting for the coalition because it was weak and unsustainable, and would crack under pressure.
One of his platform speakers even went so far as to describe the arrangement of the UNC and its partners as a “shotgun” marriage that was bound to collapse right after the sweet honeymoon period was over.
To illustrate his wariness of coalition governments before his jubilant supporters, Mr. Manning threw caution to the wind, predicting that the new British coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party and deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrat would not survive beyond a year.
It was doomed to fail, and the ‘Brits’ would have to go back to the polls, Mr. Manning counseled his PNM supporters.
I’m not sure whether it was the heat of the electioneering campaigning from the coalition team that pushed Mr. Manning under extraordinary pressure to bad-mouth the new youthful UK government, but his statements were certainly very undiplomatic and insensitive — particularly coming from a prime minister of another country, who just happens to be the current chairman of the Commonwealth.
If the new UK’s prime minister was too busy putting his coalition government together and wasn’t initially aware of the discourteous statements coming from Port of Spain, Mr. Cameron was duly informed of Mr. Manning’s bungling remarks in a letter of apology from UNC’s Chairman, Jack Warner.
According to Mr. Warner, who is also FIFA’s Vice-President, he felt he had to make an immediate effort at damage control to restore the twin island’s good standing in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Manning also juxtaposed the new UK government against the coalition group in the twin-island Republic, which has formed a ‘People’s Partnership’ on governing the country.
But there are major differences between the London’s coalition and the one in Trinidad and Tobago.
For starters, the London coalition wasn’t sealed until days after the election, which made the process seem questionable as a hastily patched up arrangement for the purpose of government, and secondly, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat were hardly on the same side during the electioneering period.
In contrast, talks on the Trinidad and Tobago ‘People’s Partnership’ started prior to the announcement of snap elections as the UNC and the COP, which is really a breakaway political group of the opposition party and attracts floating voters, was in the full process of unification talks.
A formal ‘People’s Partnership’ declaration of principles was also signed by all the leaders a week after the calling of the elections.
The principal players in the coalition arrangement, the UNC’s political leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who’s vying to become the country’s first female prime minister, and COP’s Winston Dookeran have a longstanding relationship that goes back to their professional teaching jobs at the University of the West Indies before their entry into national politics in the eighties.
Both Mrs. Persad-Bissessar and Mr. Dookeran have also served as government ministers in the same government, and have always had mutual respect for each other.
All these can only add to a successful coalition if they win the majority of the 41-seats up for grab in the elections.
There are, however, legitimate concerns over the inclusion of former trade union jefe, Errol McCleod in the coalition group, given his very militant stance in the past concerning workers and governments.
How will Mr. McCleod in a coalition government react to the restraining of wage increases for workers given the decline in oil and gas revenues? Will the coalition group in Trinidad and Tobago follow in the footstep of the UK coalition to set up a coalition committee to resolve any issues of conflict that may arise over the question of governance? And will they have a formal undertaking to ensure that a government under a coalition group will endure the full five-year term?
It may be essential for the coalition, before heading into the May 24 elections, to give these reassurances to the population, which has seen four elections taking place over a ten-year period.
Coalition governments are nothing new, and horse-trading, even after an election in which there are no declared winners, is the norm, with all the inherent risks and advantages.
There also continues to be successful coalition governments around the world in this modern day. For example, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has a coalition government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ireland has not had a single party ruling the government since 1989, and there are functioning coalition governments in Israel and Turkey.
Despite Mr. Manning’s contentions that coalition governments in Trinidad and Tobago have not worked, the records indeed show that their resilience went the full term.
The National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), the party of parties which saw the PNM’s first defeat in 30 years, served out its full term from 1986-1991, despite a split mid-term in government.
Again in the UNC/NAR coalition under Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, the coalition remained intact and served out its full term between 1995-2000.
So, Mr. Manning’s argument does not bear out the facts on coalition governments in the country.
In contrast, the PNM failed to complete their five-year terms in 1991, 2001 and 2007. The UNC also did not survive a year in government after winning the 2000 election when internal conflict threatened to bring down the administration.
The inconclusive election result in Britain also raised the issue of whether Britain should move to adopt proportional representation instead of the winner-takes-all system that also exists in our countries in the Caribbean.
It is an issue that has been raised from time to time in Trinidad as the ideal voting system to represent the multi-ethnic, multi-religious groups in the country.
In the aftermath of the 2007 general elections, the issue of proportional representation was discussed at some level in the public domain after the COP – the third party in the election race captured over 140,000 votes but failed to win a single seat in the Parliament.
So far, none of the parties has raised this as a platform issue.
The coming together of the UNC, COP and its other partners are putting up a formidable challenge to wrest control of the government from the PNM. Nightly polls conducted on two major television stations have put the coalition group and Mrs. Persad-Bissessar far ahead of the PNM as viewers choice to form the next government and as prime minister respectively.
In another 24 hours, just over one million people from the twin-island state will cast their votes. Whether Mr. Manning’s argument on the weakness of the coalition will win out over the coalition’s platform themes of the country’s high crime rate and financial mismanagement will be soon decided by the masses.