Election of the Day I: Trinidad and Tobago

The two elections taking place today have a number of similarities. They’re both FPTP Westminster style parliamentary governments, currently governed by a mainstream center-left party, and they’re both early elections, called shortly after a change in leadership in the ruling party. Canada I discussed with Rob and Scott last week, and they’ll get their election day post shortly. But we’ll start with the other one.

The reason for the leadership change in the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) was probably in part (as in Canada) an effort to get out from under an unpopular incumbent, but it also appears to be an ordinary story of retirement at an appropriate age. Keith Rowley, Trinidad and Tobago’s volcanologist turned politician PM, had led the PNM in parliament since 2010, serving as PM since their electoral victory in the 2015 election, is 75 years old, and did not plan to stand for re-election to another term. Stuart Young, his energy minister and preferred successor, won a recent leadership election and within 24 hours of assuming the office of prime minister had called for President Christine Kangaloo (they fired the Queen and went republic in 1976) to dissolve parliament and schedule an election.

While over 17 parties are fielding candidates, Trinidad and Tobago’s voters tend to be respectful followers of Duverger’s law. PNM and their primary opposition, the United National Congress, received over 90% of the vote and all 41 seats in the 2020 election, 22-19. Both the PNM and the UNC tend to be classified as “center-left” and it’s difficult to figure out exactly where their core policy differences lie. From what I’ve been able to discern in many ways the PNM probably leans a little harder into the “center” part of “center-left” while UNC leans into the “left” part a bit more, but not with any kind of consistency. The UNC has closer ties to unions, and promotes a foreign policy of closer ties to other Carribean countries, while PNM’s foreign policy has emphasized closer ties to the US and the UK. Perhaps the most significant difference is the core base of support; The PNM is the party of choice for most members of the Afro-Trinidadian community, while the UNC represents the Indo-Trinidadian community, sometimes being referred as the “Hindu party.” (These are the two largest ethnic groups in the country, of similar size, as both make up between 35-40% of the population). Stuart Young has some potential crossover appeal, as he has some ties to the Indo-Trinidadian community on his mother’s side; he’s been known to signal this side of his identity by performing Bollywood classics at Divali events. Young’s opponent is Kamla Persad-Bissessar, a lawyer and former PM (2010-2015) who has led the UNC since 2010.

The content of the election will all sound fairly familiar to most readers. Crime looms large, understandably, as Trinidad and Tobago (or more accurately Trinidad, as the crime rate is quite low in Tobago) has one of the worst rates of violent crime and highest levels of gang activity in the Caribbean and indeed the world. Both parties are promising crackdowns of various sorts, with Young promising to create a new elite undercover unit to infiltrate the gangs largely responsible for violent crime, while Persad-Bissessar is focused on building and funding new forensic facilities and increasing CCTV coverage in major cities. While the PNM is touting their major infrastructural accomplishments, the UNC is criticizing corruption and waste in their delivery. (Both seem to have a point on that front.) Despite nominally being to the left of the governing party, the UNC has criticized the government for being too lenient/permissive with respect to Venezuelan asylum-seekers, and has pledged to cut some taxes. (Venezuelans appear to be blamed for the high violent crime rate with some frequency in Trinidad, and while it’s undisputably true that Venezuelan gang activity contributes to the crime problem, it is also true that Trinidad’s high murder rate substantially pre-dates the sharp rise in Venezuelan immigration.)

There does not appear to be much of a consensus about what is likely to happen today. The only publicly available poll I’m aware of, which was limited to voters in 11 “marginal” constituencies, gave the UNC a 45-30 lead earlier this month, along with an implausibly high level of reported support for minor parties. Young appears confident this election will give the mandate he wants, but the early election could very well backfire on him.

It’s a big year for elections in this region, as we’ll be covering Suriname, Guyana, Haiti, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamaica before the end of the year. (I regret to inform you that I dropped the ball and failed to cover the Curacao election last month, where PM Gilmar Pisas’s Movement for the Future of Curacao party dominated and consolidated control of the Estates). We’ll also return to Trinidad and Tobago for the Tobagan League of Assembly election, which will take place before the end of the year.