By Raffique Shah
March 15, 2025

I imagine by the time readers get through today’s column, the People’s National Movement (PNM) will have completed its processes and revealed its full slate of candidates minus Dr Keith Rowley, who, as far as I can translate what is happening, will not be prime minister but will remain political leader of the party.

Yeah, I know: I’ve just burdened you with a long-winded sentence; bear in mind that the narrative reflects what is actually happening on the ground. So, if people are confused by what is happening, hopefully they will not be confused by my writing.

The UNC must also lay out its election slate and host some activities that will show the party as being alive, not necessarily kicking. UNC strategists must have something to excite the electorate and the populace. They have been struggling to remain relevant. Its leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, looks as if she was experiencing chronic fatigue as she spoke at her last meeting—not a good sign when the real race has yet to start.

There is enough politics in the air to keep commentators, analysts and political scientists busy. At the time of writing this column, we did not have an election date; by this afternoon, the incoming prime minister, Stuart Young, might well have called the date: a bit of fancy footwork to confuse the many contenders for—and pretenders to—the throne.

By naming Young as the new PM, Dr Rowley has succeeded in sowing the seeds of confusion in the path of the Opposition party. They set out a few decades ago to wrest the prime ministership from the PNM and succeeded—what?—on three or four occasions in the country’s ten or more general elections held. And their victories came only when two or more of them presented the electorate with a united slate of candidates.

As happens so often in politics, the leader of the main opposition party, Persad-Bissessar, became very arrogant in her only year of successes, 2010. In succumbing to the disease that plagues politicians, she used, abused, and spat out her rivals. The good thing about the 2025 general election is it pulled the theatre-style curtain that bared the true faces of all the contenders and pretenders for all to see who they were.

In the case of the UNC, the roots were cultivated by the United Labour Front whose leaders and core supporters knew the innards of the party to the extent that they could manipulate the leaders and vice versa. The PNM did not have any major war over leadership in its ranks. Dr Eric Williams was the Alpha, Beta, and Omega of the pack. Not a damn dog dared to bark when he growled.

For a man who had no direct intervention in politics anywhere before he “let his bucket down” in 1955, he learnt quickly. He learnt the wiles of politicking, Trini-style, and used them to snuff out any semblance of life or growth in his would-be opponents.

Members of the local intelligentsia, who came mainly from the ranks of teachers and senior civil servants who had benefited from tertiary education or travels abroad, found the Oxford graduate Doctor could bark, bite or fight like any street dog. As his popularity increased, the founders of the PNM, the party’s real base, retreated into safety behind their walls, but continued to support D’Doctah.

So, Eric ruled his roost with an iron fist, an Oxford brain, and the street smarts of behind-the-bridge bottle pelters who were the “baddest” gangsters of the day. He would drop in at a Dry River panyard anytime he chose—the gangsters had to know their place.

It took the upheaval of 1970, that massive convulsion, to shake the roots and branches that held PNM supporters bound to Eric. Then in the 1971 general election, the opposition DLP (by then ANR Robinson had resigned from the PNM as its deputy leader and cussed Eric upside-down; not literally, of course) called for and instituted a boycott—a no-vote campaign that was largely successful. The PNM won every seat, but with under 100,000 votes.

It was the beginning of the end, though Dr Williams and party diehards did not see it. The events of 1970 had knocked the PNM to the canvas, but not knocked it out. Thereafter, the politics of the country would change, although Williams persevered as if nothing had happened. He died in office in 1981.

That Dr Rowley took the cautionary step of resigning from office rather than face defeat is the big question that will be answered when voters go to the polls whenever the election is held. If the party stays united, as it has done repeatedly in the past, then a new-faced PNM will emerge.

More on this next week.