75 thoughts on “T&T General Elections 2007 Unofficial Results”

1. Look at the PNM and Look at UNC and COP and tell which is more representative of the population of Trinidad and Tobago. The electorate looked into its soul and sent a message to the ethnicist to change their ways. Those lamenting over the UNC lost are just nostalgic for the reign of marginalization, corruption and ethnic preference that defined its duration in power.

   The PNM must move forward with the business of making the nation safe and secure for its citizens, regardless of how they look or how they voted. This kind of approach to governance does not exist in the gene pool of the leadership of the UNC.

2. Those who are bitter over the PNM’s deserved victory, need to remember that there is a Creator, and that if he/she created all things, is omniescient, and wants the best for his creatures, then Mr. Manning’s “Vox populi,vox dei, is an apt quotation. People of every race made a calculated decision that life under the PNM is a better prospect for all, for the aged, for the sick, for children, for youth. Dissenters would defy a greater intelligence, and beieve that the people, who have spoken, are stupid. They are not

   There seems to be anger at the building boom in downtown P.O.S. For years, people of certain groups build buildings and rented them at exorbitant prices to government ministries and state enterprises. creating serious problems of seurity. They are the ones protesting loudly about the government’s builing its own ofice buildings. Check with any developed country and see if its major state buildings are rented.

   We act like we are living in an isolette, and our people cannot compare what is going on in our country, with elsewhere. We are some of the best thinkers on social issues. We need the opposition to get to work and begin earning the money they sue to get two parliaments ago.

   That we found that “Sleeping with the Devil” is not a winning election strategy in The Land of The Trinity, should not surprise anyone. The Triune God lives. We believe.The Triune God is at the heart of our values, including the willingness to treat others as people, something that may not have happened if we had elected a “Hindu Government.” How many non-Hindu Indians were on the UNC’s slate? We voted to reject backward thinking. Hindutva is nota political movement in TnT.

3. First to Winston Dookeran “TOGETHER WE STAND, DIVIED WE FALL!” If you weren’t so hungry for power and really care about the poeple of TnT. Hope you save some money!
   And for the people who voted for a man like Manning hope you are happy you have just put the detonator of a nuclear bomb in Trinidad in his hand. You people forget this is our country chinese, indian, black, white and spanish and we honestly don’t care that we are destroying it!? You people must be blind not to see whatever UNC had put inplace Manning has destroyed and not for good of the people but for his own selfish needs but to feel all big and mighty. But is he or any of you thinking about TnT.

4. The notion that leaders are chosen by God’s will and ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’ usually gets tossed around after an election. If that were simply true then it was God who brought Hitler and Bush to power. As a matter of fact, God can be blamed for the evil done by brutal and otherwise corrupt leaders.

   I rather believe that the only ‘god’ that put these ignorant and brutal leaders in office, even under the disguise of democracy, is the collective action of underdeveloped people who vote for them.

   Is that the will of some supreme deity? Quite possibly so, as in my view many people do deserve what they get and are entitled to the backwardness of their own choosing.

5. PNM managed the electioneering process very effectively, given the dynamics of the political landscape, a well balanced team, effective support speakers for the moods, the ages the marketing of its accomplishments, and positioning its future plans for more accomplishments, the embrace of more East Indian support, the music spoke to the different tones that spoke to this strategy, Conrad Enil, lowered the calypso picong that could be rough on the edges and make others in our rainbow society uncomfortable.

   The UNC, was a damaged product from the start, so rather than speak to their strengths, the strategy of making the COP the target backfired. Mr. Panday has never moved away from his style of Union type leadership and organization, the internal misfiring on the growth dynamic within the UNC drove away many.

   It is not clear that the people who left the UNC to join COP, would have voted for the Alliance.
   The middle class Indians and the other others who did not bring any gravitas to the COP had no leverage, THE COP has to be in a consolidation, phase and clearly articulate a philosophy of economic management together with the social template to suit a T&T environment.

   Summing up, the superior organizational resources of the PNM, withstood the array of negative advertising offered by those opposing the PNM.

   THE PNM is looking to the future, with a new “pack”the UNC and the COP, was playing with marked “pack”, easier to read.

   Long Live The PNM.

   Carlton.

6. Congratulations to the PNM and its leader, Patrick Manning, on an historic victory and an affirmation of your vision for T&T. With this mandate now is the time for bold, innovative ideas to address the urgent needs of our poor, our differently-abled, our senior citizens, and our young people. Some areas of our communities of Laventille, Morvant, Port of Spain, Caroni, Point Fortin, La Brea, San Fernando, Penal, and many others need a “Manning Plan” for their rejunevation. Let us, in five years, or less, eradicate all sub-standard housing (e.g. the “shacks” in which some of our children are living), lack of pipe-borne water, electricity, and poor health services, etc. Mr. Manning, this may be your last opportunity for greatness, seize it.

7. The UNC supporters laying blame on the COP for the victory of the PNM. What cockeyed sentiment.On one hand they wanted the COP to accept the status of the abused and battered wife syndrome, and then the threat of if you don’t come back into this abusive relationship ,you are to BLAME, IF THE COP, DECIDES TO MOVE OWN WITH NEW RELATIONSHIPS.

   It says something very fundamental about those who are singing this mantra,

   Divali, the festival of light, is about the revelation of truth, there is convergence with the defeat of UNC and the Victory, read the manifestation.

   Sitaram my fellow Citizens.

8. I am also pleased, overall, that ten women were elected on the PNM ticket, of 26. Three were elected on the UNC ticket. Overall, that’s thirteen women in a parliament of 41. That is 31.5% overall. This is history-making. I hope these women could get together to push for legislation to deal with abuse of women and children, providing day care for all working mothers- this asa result of state and local enterprise cooperation, shelters toprotect women and families in crisis,and year-round school in depressed areas.Women have been handed a powerful voice in Trinidad and Tobago, I hope they would use it to lift the overall level of regard the nation has for its women.

9. Correction to previous comment: Only two women won on UNC ticket I mistook one name for a female,which? Doesn’t matter. Two women, two Muslims, two non-Indians. Really integrated! But the number of women, totally, who won seats, is stil something to be proud of.

10. Let’s be honest for a change, would africans in tnt vote for a indian leader.NO. would indians vote for an african leader? YES. There is no other relevant question. That is the only reason the PNM would continue to win elections. Despite the rape, kidnapping (99% victims) and murder of indians in TNT and the undeniable connections between crime and Abu Bakr and Abu Bakr and Manning. So let us delude ourselves into thinking that the areas in TNT that are populated mostly by Indians will be protected better and receive better government service. Good Luck fools . I left TNT because there are too many of you. OH but when Panday was in power he mostly help those areas (some might say) Yeh, because nothing was done for so many years, he use the opportunity to shift the scale. Yet he did many things to improve infrastructure and security which benefited everyone.

11. “Let’s be honest for a change, would africans in tnt vote for a indian leader.NO. would indians vote for an african leader? YES. There is no other relevant question.”

    Nigel, you are being dishonest. There are Africans who rally with and support the UNC and there are Indians who rally with and support the PNM. Since we are never certain how anyone votes in the privacy of the voting booth you can speculate anything, but the fact is UNC has African supporters and African candidates. PNM has Indian supporters and Indian candidates.

12. at least thank god that its over. so we can get back with our lives.

13. A.M.R you don’t need to go to the voting booth after you get the results. Who (indians and africans the dominant ethnic groups)voted for which party can be seen with the distribution of seats and dominant ethnic groups of the area. Lets face it TT is a very racially divided country, especially in politics. Don’t let the casting of africans in the UNC and indians in PNM fool you. It is a sick mentality and manifests itself in many situations in TT, we tend to get away a bit from it when we chose or forced to live outside of TT and loook for comonality. Then we appreciate how nice it is to put ethnicity on the backburner, realizing that we all know how to dance to calypso and chutny and share common experiences. There is almost no other place where both indians and africans understand wach other as we do, including east africa and fiji.

14. The first PNM group, that took us to independence, was a multi-ethnic party including Kamal, Montano, Granado, Bert Wallace and others. This party has continued to be the multi-ethnic party of Trinidad and Tobago- the party that does for the people. Look at the names of the winners. They are not of any one group, but represent every category of names that people could have in TnT. Some profiteers do not want to run for office. You cannot force someone from a small ethnic group to publicly run, when their modus operandi is to see how much they could rake in for themselves.

    I hope this Party of The People will continue to do for the people in those areas of health care, housing,job training, free education for all, to every level; and infrastructure development; as well as careful management of our national resources.

    When I look at state offices, I hope to continue to see people of both major races working there, never mind that when you look at an Indian owned business you could tell who own it from who working there.

    I hope the children of Trinidad and Tobago, educated at state expense,will value this. They wil have to be taught to value it, by people who have the national interest in mind.In places like the Phillipines one year of college education costs about five years’ salary, so very few people can go to college.Just comparing us with other Caribbean islands and South America would show us how much we have going for us.In many parts of Latin America,except Venezuela and Brazil, people of our complections, and with dark eyes and hair, are cocoa pickers, banana harvesters, and low paid daily workers.Millions hae never had steady jobs. They do not own land. Change is coming to those places, to get their education up to par with ours. They have excellent universities, but it is who go to them that matters. The light and bright get in, the Afro-Indio population is relegated to the dirty work.In Trinidad, we have created an elite of the educated. We must keep and share that.

    If we do not know what we have, we could throw it out with the garbage- thus the casting pearls before swine analogy.
    I want my country to be like my family- a group of people of mixed races who value and care for each other.

    I am glad that I do not have to hold on to “show money”in the US or elsewhere, in case my dougla nieces and nephews need to run from the place.I would like to think that the cousins who grew up in Puerto Rico and now speak only Spanish could come to discover their roots, and not be treated badly. That is the Trinbago I am proud of.

    And when the new government buildings open in downtown Port-of-Spain, I hope the floor tiles match. Under the UNC we built a large airport, for billions, with mismatched tiles- seconds.I have matching tiles in the smallest room in my house. In our biggest so far, you can see the cheap construction. What a shame.It is what the UNC, under Panday, thought we were worth.(If you do not believe this, and some would doubt even this, watch the floor as you walk through the airport. )

15. Nigel – Let’s be honest for a change, would africans in tnt vote for a indian leader.NO. would indians vote for an african leader? YES. There is no other relevant question. That is the only reason the PNM would continue to win elections. Despite the rape, kidnapping (99% victims) and murder of indians in TNT and the undeniable connections between crime and Abu Bakr and Abu Bakr and Manning. So let us delude ourselves into thinking that the areas in TNT that are populated mostly by Indians will be protected better and receive better government service. Good Luck fools . I left TNT because there are too many of you. OH but when Panday was in power he mostly help those areas (some might say) Yeh, because nothing was done for so many years, he use the opportunity to shift the scale. Yet he did many things to improve infrastructure and security which benefited everyone.

    Give me a break. Where will you find Africans threatening to kill and disown their kids if the dated or married outside of their race. You sour grapes racist are so cockeyed it is wonder you do not perambulate perpetually in na horizontal posture.

    Panday is a damn rfacist who attempted to employ the slave master Willie Lynch strategy on the black people of Trinidad and Tobago. It his damn prejudice that drives him to the thinking that producing influential black faces like Mandela and Jackson would cause blacks to scurry unto his plantation. Whether it is Trinidad, the US, Africa, or anywhere else in this world, other groups progress more in African dominant environmentsthan vice versa.

    You cannot produce an iota of factual evidence to substantiate your fatuous assertion. Just a simple examination of attitudes and behaviours to holidays and occasions in commemoration of the various cultural groups is all that is necessary to see who is more comfortable with whom. You Nigel, ain’t nothing more than a spoil
    disgruntled supremacist uncomfortable with the prospects of the nation being governed by the son of a slave. No one is fooled by your double entendre assertions.

16. A look at the numbers. Someone was questioning, on another forum, why so many seats in St. George. Legislative seats are not assigned for land mass, but for people. They are fairly evenly made up, about
    12,000 to 18,000 votes, based on density of population. Looking at the results, district by district gives a better picture on what occurred. In only one constituency, in Chaguanas, did the PNM fail to get at least ten % of the votes cast. In ten constituencies, the UNC failed to get ten percent of the votes cast, and they did not contest Tobago, which makes it twelve. In two constituencies, COP failed to get ten percent of the votes cast.

    More people chose COP in more areas where the PNM won, which suggests to me that UNC would have lost no matter what.

    Overall, this says that COP was more popular than the UNC, based on percentages. I cannot recall how many votes you need to get to hold on to your deposit, but if its 10% UNC PEOPLE LOST BIG. COP lost deposits only in LAventill West and Princes Town

17. I really think that UNC should have won this election. But again it was up to the people. I really don’t understand that the people keep complaining about the crimes and kidnapping in the country but still vote for PNM.The Indian people need to learn how to communicate with each other. Example! Mr.Winston Dookeran they should have come together with Mr. Panday and definitely they would have been in parliament.

18. When will knuckleheaded people realize that kidnapping has nothing to do with race but with the perception that the victim could be traded for money, or in some cases, disposed of for more money. No one gives any notice that all the false kidnappings that were reported belonged to one ethnic group, so too were false charges of rape. Obviously those young people were creating crimes of opportunity based on many people’s perceptions that they would be believed because of their race, but they were lying. No one is kidnapping old Indian women working garden in Aranguez,nor teenage boys selling at roadside stands in Chaguanas.

    World wide,kidnapping for money means you grab the ones percieved as having money.

19. Congratulations to Mr Manning and much success to the winning party. Together we all have to work toward common goals for the betterment of the country, for the people of the country. I was in Trinidad during the election season, and my observation was such that enthusiasm and passion filled the air by all, members of all three parties, however the results of the election spoke for itself. The people of Trinidad and Tobago are not ready for change, as much as they appear to want change, they are truly happy and prefer to stay in the comfort zone that they are in. The political leader Winston Dookeran said it best,
    “The country is not ready for the change that Congress of the People has offered”.
    I am reminded of the great leader from the past, who said that we should be the change that we want.
    I wish all the people of TnT mush success.

20. Amazing how people like Linda Edwards and Ruel Daniels only see africans as the only victims of racism in Trinidad and that only indians are racial. Ruel Daniels is so blind that he accuse COP of not have an even racial makup of the executive….maybe he don’t conside black people who go against the PNM as black and perhaps chinese people outright don’t count in his view.

    Linda is talking about fals reports of kidnappings…the reason why the=ose reports only came from indians is because no africans are kidnapped as regularly as indians so if a black man claimed to be kidnapped, who would believe him? Besides, she talking like the majority of kidnappings were false. I can count 4 that proved to be false since 2002. Also, Is she saying that only indians have money in trinidad with her lame excuse. Why was the only kidnapping for ransom of a wealthy black man, a man who had strong ties to the UNC?

    Come on you people…stop claiming to be the constant victims of indian supremacy. If you same people were in China, you’d blame the chinese for your problems or if you were in Antartica, you’d blame the penguins.

21. To those unknown initials that people hide behind, Know this, that when this multi-ethnic family get together,(mine) we laugh at people like you, for how backward you really are. Nothing I have ever said could be construed as meaning that only Africans in TnT are victims of racism. I have come to realize that many who blog this column are not reading the pieces, but just adding their own point of view. Such a discussion, held in a real-life situation, could have resulted in some hot-headed stabbings and so on, which people may have blamed on race, when it was only due to some of the ignorance that people spill out so easily.Read and comprehend, think, respond, then if needed, comment further. I have taught students to use that format. It makes sense.

22. Quote from a pair of Initials – Amazing how people like Linda Edwards and Ruel Daniels only see africans as the only victims of racism in Trinidad and that only indians are racial. Ruel Daniels is so blind that he accuse COP of not have an even racial makup of the executive….maybe he don’t conside black people who go against the PNM as black and perhaps chinese people outright don’t count in his view.

    Linda is talking about fals reports of kidnappings…the reason why the=ose reports only came from indians is because no africans are kidnapped as regularly as indians so if a black man claimed to be kidnapped, who would believe him? Besides, she talking like the majority of kidnappings were false. I can count 4 that proved to be false since 2002. Also, Is she saying that only indians have money in trinidad with her lame excuse. Why was the only kidnapping for ransom of a wealthy black man, a man who had strong ties to the UNC?

    Come on you people…stop claiming to be the constant victims of indian supremacy. If you same people were in China, you’d blame the chinese for your problems or if you were in Antartica, you’d blame the penguins.

    Aint seen no African begging Mandela to come take them from Trinidad back to Africa. Ain’t seen no global African organization running around complaining about racism.

    The skinny on you initialed wonders is that you resent any interruption of your sneaky prejudiced manifestations. Me, I’m a racist buster. Remember Ghost buster. Well I am the equivalent of that to you Brahmins who seek to make Africans your Neekarams.

    I do not measure racism based on groups, I do so based on individuals and organizations. And there is an organized effort in the diaspora to silence exposure to Indian racism. The format is often the sort produced by this initialed wonder, focussing on those who snuff out closeted brigands and lay waste to their damn prejudice.

    It is what it is, and you are what you are. As Bro Bob Marley said, “if the cap fit, then wear it”

23. Brilliant response from Ruel Daniels!!! I purposly use initials so you cannot figur out what ethnicity I am. So Ruel who claim not to be racists based on groups displays his close minded approach to everything by assumeing that I am indian because I oppose his ideas and is evidenced by when he called me a bramhin.

    But Ruel Daniels has a good racket going…the one of crying victim for everything. How come he didn’t say any negative comments on the article about politial immaturity in Trindad? If Kangal wrote a similar piece, he and Edwards would be tearing it to shreds….Edwards has as similar tactic of saying they not racist while being racits. Same article, Linda Edwards completely ignore Dr. Nantumbe’s article and goes on to attck the comments of one UNC candidate.

24. Post from Initialled one – Brilliant response from Ruel Daniels!!! I purposly use initials so you cannot figur out what ethnicity I am. So Ruel who claim not to be racists based on groups displays his close minded approach to everything by assumeing that I am indian because I oppose his ideas and is evidenced by when he called me a bramhin.

    But Ruel Daniels has a good racket going…the one of crying victim for everything. How come he didn’t say any negative comments on the article about politial immaturity in Trindad? If Kangal wrote a similar piece, he and Edwards would be tearing it to shreds….Edwards has as similar tactic of saying they not racist while being racits. Same article, Linda Edwards completely ignore Dr. Nantumbe’s article and goes on to attck the comments of one UNC candidate.

    I do not give a rat’s patudi why you used initials, or what ethnicity you think you are. But for the record, your “you people” and “blame what not for your problems” is sufficient evidence for me to conjour up a word image of the narrow faced bigot those sentiments are originating from. Your subterfuge in hiding your identity in order to lend weight to your disjointed attacks is so damn tired. Try something new, call yourself Rodrigues, something, but can the crap.

    About the only thing more disgusting than your attempt to disguise your sentiments is your assumption that you can fool anyone. Gwan suh man. The words that flow from you carry a pattern as recognizable as day. I stand by my observations. And like I said, your words speak for themselves.

25. When I ued the term “you people” I was refering to Ruel Daniels and Linda Edwards….not a broad section of the population like Ruel does. Maybe because that is his mindset, he thingks that is how everyone thinks as well. Ruel’s only rebuttal is to accuse me of being wrong and that I am unsure of my ethnicity. What a small mind you have…are you in high school still?

26. My nephew, who is foreign born says, jestingly, that Trinis can only count up to two. They say, one , two,and then they see a tree. After reading the comments on my comments, I will ask him to include than many cannot read either, not at the level of full comprehension.They define some words from a particular mindset, and never deviate,no matter what the evidence.

    Now we do have a problem of people who have residues of four languages mastering any one of them, but this is not what I am talking about.It is the Ruel Daniels and Linda Edwards syndrome, that continually cause near appoplexy in the L.Pauls and Herus. Supposing one of these peopl found themseles in a course taught by someone with my initials,or Daniels’ would they foam at the mouth?

    I remain an issue oriented thinking person. Race as defined in TnT is an artificial construct that eats away at the core values of the society. It may be that in my case a female writer brings out the old resentments about a woman’s place in TnT.My callaloo,sweetbread and macaroni pie are also of very high quality,so say my guests.

27. OK. Get back to the issues. BTW my initials mean Rotiman (from) Trinidad. As I said earlier we don’t need all this verbosity to see how the votes were distributed by dominant ethnic group of the area. There is nothing to tell a story like a free and confidential vote in a recally sensitive state. OK there might be the odd anomaly.

28. Tangential, but worth noting: I just returned from a dinner meeting
    where I sat between a Greek student of Engineering working on his PhD
    and a Buddhist monk from Japan, on a four-day visit to the USA. The monk knew where Trinidad is, has a collection of soca music, which he first heard in The Turks and Caicos Islands,and is very interested in coming to Trinidad for Carnival. He wants to see and document it in photographs. I told him he could hope for 2009.2008 is probably sold out.

    Anyone knowing of a major or any conference on comparative religion, to be held at any of the universites in the region, around Ash Wednesday of 2009, please give me the info so I could forward it.I will of course use other sources also, but this blog could help. I do not think this spiritual person saw what ethnic group I probably belong to. He saw Trinbagonian.The Greek you would describe as “mixed” with curly dark hair, but he was Greek. Anyone knows anyone personally who is on an IRO committee?

29. i do understand how mr panday must have felt loosing the general elections, but addressing the public in such a manner as to tell those who didnt vote for u an those that didnt vote at all must look themselves in the mirror an hold ur belly an cry, cause of crime, well thta is nothing to say although you may have been rite but ur statement was bitter and im not goin to respect u in such a manner. mr panday beibg the prime minister efore u should have some sought of de corum.

30. I agree with Mr. Ruel Daniels that racism perpetrated by certain indo-trinis needs to be eradicated (like any other kind of racism).
    However, his wholesale labelling of east indians in general and hindus in particular as racist brahmin plottrers (dalit origins nonwithstanding).
    This actually makes it difficult for east indians to attack the racists in their own community, as they would likely draw additional fire by doing so.
    Perhaps, something like this:

    Sat: “I am opposed to the steel pan, I don’t like anything African”

    Peter Beharry: “Sat you’re talking crap. It’s an Afro-Trini invention but it’s the national instrument of all Trinbagonians. Swim back to India if you will”

    Rued Daniel: “Who the hell is Beharry trying to fool? It’s the sneaky hypocrites like him who are the worst. Beharry, you’re a racist just like all of your kind. What’s your agenda in pretending otherwise? At least Sat’s being honest. Wake up my people! The Indians who pretend to be non-racist are the worst kind of deceivers! Their agenda is to destroy by stealth, even by intermarriage! The only honest Indians are the ones who speak and live their vile racism in its plain and raw form!”

    Peter Beharry:”Why did I even try….”

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