Analysts: No opposition in THA raises governance concerns

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) could face sig­nif­i­cant gov­er­nance chal­lenges in man­ag­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in the ab­sence of a for­mal op­po­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Prof Hamid Ghany.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s elec­tion pro­gramme To­ba­go De­cides on Mon­day evening, Ghany said the elec­tion out­come un­der­scored the win­ner-take-all na­ture of the first-past-the-post elec­toral sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly in small Caribbean leg­is­la­tures. He not­ed that such a clean sweep would have been far less like­ly un­der a pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion sys­tem, in which seats are al­lo­cat­ed based on the per­cent­age of votes cast.

While the re­sult strength­ens the TPP’s po­si­tion nu­mer­i­cal­ly, Ghany said it al­so presents an up­hill task for ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance.

“In 2013, the THA was 12–0 and there was no op­po­si­tion for the en­tire term. Now you’re go­ing to have no op­po­si­tion again, so we’ll see how this is go­ing to go,” he said. “It’s a chal­lenge to gov­ern with­out an op­po­si­tion in the House, be­cause some­times you need the op­po­si­tion to say things that you can re­spond to. When you’re lis­ten­ing to your­self in the House, it’s very dif­fer­ent. You re­al­ly de­pend on an op­po­si­tion to raise is­sues that force a re­sponse.”

Ghany al­so point­ed to in­ter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), ref­er­enc­ing To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis’ con­ces­sion speech, in which he sug­gest­ed his res­ig­na­tion would “make a lot of peo­ple more hap­pi­er”.

“That in­di­cates some­thing else was go­ing on in the par­ty,” Ghany said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad echoed con­cerns about lead­er­ship chal­lenges with­in the PNM.

“I think there are is­sues in the PNM. As we know, there were di­vi­sions and con­cerns about lead­er­ship,” Ram­per­sad said. “I don’t think they were able to pull it to­geth­er in such a short space of time. While it has been more than six months, it was still too short for them to re­group, es­pe­cial­ly since the play­ers are pret­ty much the same ones who have been in the PNM for the last ten years.”

Ram­per­sad said the ap­point­ment of in­de­pen­dent mem­bers to the THA could help pre­serve checks and bal­ances in the ab­sence of an elect­ed op­po­si­tion.

She re­called a sim­i­lar episode in 1971, when a no-vote cam­paign re­sult­ed in the PNM win­ning all par­lia­men­tary seats, prompt­ing MP Roy Richard­son to re­sign as a ju­nior min­is­ter in or­der to be­come Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

Ram­per­sad al­so at­trib­uted Mon­day’s elec­tion out­come to vot­er dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the PNM af­ter ten years in gov­ern­ment un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

She cit­ed what she de­scribed as the par­ty’s “hubris, ar­ro­gance, treat­ment of the labour move­ment, mis­man­age­ment of the econ­o­my and crime” as key fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing To­bag­on­ian vot­ers, re­flect­ing pat­terns seen in the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion.

She fur­ther crit­i­cised the PNM’s cam­paign strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly its fo­cus on the radar in­stal­la­tion is­sue, which she de­scribed as a non-is­sue that was blown out of pro­por­tion.

“They re­al­ly need­ed to fo­cus on the is­sues — youth un­em­ploy­ment, de­clin­ing tourism, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, cor­rup­tion and au­ton­o­my,” Ram­per­sad said.

In con­trast, she said Chief Sec­re­tary-elect Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s em­pha­sis on au­ton­o­my res­onat­ed strong­ly with vot­ers and con­tributed to his de­ci­sive vic­to­ry.

Look­ing ahead, Ram­per­sad said it re­mains to be seen whether the PNM — which she de­scribed as a for­mi­da­ble po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion — can re­group and re­bound strong­ly enough to un­seat the TPP and re­claim con­trol of the THA.