CRAPAUD POLITICS

A long time ago at an election meeting in San Fernando Dr. Eric Williams who was then the Prime Minister, said words to the effect that if a crapaud (which for the benefit of my foreign readers is a toad) wore a balisier tie (the balisier is the symbol of the PNM) that he would be elected. Dr. Williams was expressing a certain frustration because he had wanted to get rid of certain PNM candidates (the then MP for Port of Spain South, Brinsley Barrow, was one) and had been forced by the Party Groups of those constituencies to accept them as PNM candidates. He was effectively calling these persons on the PNM slate crapauds. To say that he was annoyed was putting it mildly.

The electorate well understood what he meant and although Mr. Barrow and the others were re-elected their political careers were effectively over and they were all pushed out at the next elections.

The phrase came back to me this morning as I was going to work and listening to the popular talk show duo on the radio, Dale Enoch and Tony Lee, who, in commenting on the up-coming Chaguanas West (CW) by-election,  used the phrase 'crapaud politics'. They were high lighting Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar's exhortation to the CW electorate to vote party and not personality ... an obvious not-so-tacit admission that Jack Warner is a huge problem for the People's Partnership and the UNC in particular. Mr. Warner remains extremely popular in the CW seat and probably beyond. My information (which is usually very accurate) is that all 31 party groups in the constituency nominated Mr. Warner as their candidate. The fact that the UNC Party Leadership decided to ignore the wishes of the party groups and to impose their acting chairman, Khadijah Ameen, as the UNC candidate for the CW seat is going to spell huge trouble for both the Party as well as the Party's Leadership. The voice of the people, it seems, is no longer the voice of God!

People have noticed this obvious dichotomy and they are talking. There is a level of dissatisfaction that is rising now in the country that has to be disturbing to the UNC Leadership ... if they are listening! The problem is that the UNC Leadership appears to be "getting high on their own supply" and attempts to bring them down to earth by well meaning supporters who are worried about the looming crash,  are dismissed with a casualness that borders on arrogance.

Then too, the newspapers don't help by their continued inaccurate reporting. Take, for example, an article in yesterday's Sunday Guardian
that said that the UNC motorcade was met with a warm welcome in Felicity on Saturday. I was surprised by the article and decided to check it out by telephoning someone in that area who has always reported to me faithfully what has been going on down there. Her exact words were "dose newspapers could lie! If it had ten people from Felicity in dat motorcade it had plenty!"  So, why was the Guardian deliberately misleading it's readers? I can think of only two possible reasons: (a) the reporter is incompetent; or (b) the Guardian wants to mislead the UNC Leadership into a false sense of security because the newspaper is really against the Government and wants them to lose. I freely admit that there might be another reason for the inaccuracy, but for the life of me I can't think what it might be.

But that is a digression. The point here is that Jack Warner is going to upset the crapaud politics that has prevailed in this country for more than fifty years. When (and not "if") he wins he will be able to say convincingly that he is the new face of politics in this country. His victory will not only be a terrible blow for the UNC but also for the PNM whose seats the formidable Warner is bound to turn his attention to. The two major Parties in this country cannot be happy over the developing scenario. Both of them have played their respective hands very badly against Mr. Warner who is looking more and more like a winner with each passing day. And people love winners!

P.S.  The return of a triumphant Jack Warner to the House of Representatives is going to spell serious trouble for the Persad-Bissessar regime in more ways than one. One of the things that Mrs. Persad-Bissessar is going to have to pay close attention to is her seemingly invincible majority. At the moment she commands 28 of the 41 seats in Parliament. She will  no longer be able to count on CW when (and not "if") Jack Warner wins. No big thing you say? Well, it could become a big thing. There are several Parliamentarians on the PP side who are likely to go over to Jack, especially as all of their seats are vulnerable and could fall to the PNM in the next elections if they don't. There are 3 UNC seats, the occupants of which look as though they will throw in with Mr. Warner: these are Ortoire/Mayaro (Gypsy), St. Joseph (Volney) and San Juan/Barataria (Fuad Khan). Now Herbert Volney isn't the brightest bulb in the room and he ain't worth "diddley squat" in the polls but he does at present occupy a seat, and therein lies a huge problem for the Prime Minister. In addition, there are COP seats occupied by the likes of Anil Roberts, Lincoln Douglas and Winston DeCoteau that will likely go over to Jack. (If they don't, they will lose to the PNM in the next general election.)That's a total of seven seats including Jack's. The margin starts to get very uncomfortable. The PP will then be dependent on the two Tobago seats to remain in office until 2015. Interesting, eh? And we haven't yet begun to discuss what will happen when the next general election rolls around!!