Ghany urges PNM introspection after THA loss

Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­[email protected]

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany has de­scribed the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty’s (TPP) To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) land­slide as an­oth­er ma­jor set­back for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), call­ing for se­ri­ous re­flec­tion and a new ap­proach to po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s post-elec­tion pro­gramme To­ba­go De­cides last night, Ghany said, “The PNM is fac­ing an­oth­er de­feat in To­ba­go, so a fourth suc­ces­sive de­feat for the PNM un­der two dif­fer­ent lead­ers.”

He said the par­ty now faces an ur­gent need to re­assess its di­rec­tion and lead­er­ship strat­e­gy. “They have got to start do­ing some se­ri­ous in­tro­spec­tion be­cause the lead­er­ship has to come up with some kind of way in which they are go­ing to re-en­gage the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty over­all and then the in­di­vid­ual Trinidad and To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ties sep­a­rate­ly.”

Ghany said the 15-0 pre­lim­i­nary re­sult high­light­ed the fail­ure of the PNM’s ex­ist­ing strate­gies.

“They have to find a new mod­el be­cause this is not a very en­cour­ag­ing night for them and the fourth con­sec­u­tive de­feat.”

Busi­ness­woman and for­mer chair of the To­ba­go branch of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Di­ane Hadad, al­so ques­tioned the sig­nif­i­cance of the de­clared out­come, point­ing to low vot­er turnout.

Speak­ing af­ter re­sults showed more than 12,000 votes count­ed, Hadad said, “Be­cause at this stage, we have de­clared a vic­to­ry and we have about 12,000-plus votes that have been count­ed. That does not im­press me, at a 53,000-plus vot­er bank, that’s not mak­ing sense to me.”

She said her as­sess­ment re­flect­ed what she ob­served on elec­tion day yes­ter­day. “It means my read­ing of what took place to­day (yes­ter­day) and what I saw was very re­al.”

Hadad said she en­coun­tered wide­spread un­cer­tain­ty among vot­ers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of her own staff.

“Per­sons did not, I’m telling you, my staff did not even take one time off and I’m ask­ing them, you go­ing to vote? This was ap­pre­hen­sion; it’s as though I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to vote for this one, but I don’t want that one ei­ther. That’s sad.”

She said the sit­u­a­tion left her unim­pressed.

“So, I am not im­pressed by all of this, un­for­tu­nate­ly for every­body else.”

Hadad said the re­sult still sent a strong sig­nal to the TPP.

“It still sends a big mes­sage that the TPP has a lot of an­swer­ing to do in terms of ac­count­ing for four years, be­cause al­though they may win, it’s not again by any­thing sig­nif­i­cant in terms of the peo­ple that did not come out to vote.”

She al­so ques­tioned whether long­stand­ing par­ty loy­al­ties had shift­ed, ask­ing, “Is it that the PNM peo­ple are still pun­ish­ing PNM?”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said the re­sult should now trig­ger lead­er­ship change with­in the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil.

Asked whether po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis should re­sign, James said, “I think so. I think he has to give it up. He has to re­sign. I think he has to go. You fol­low?”

James said re­new­al was ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary to re­con­nect with the elec­torate.

“And cre­ate space for new blood to take over and at­tract the elec­torate in ways that have not been done by the PNM. That has to hap­pen.”

He al­so ad­dressed ex­pec­ta­tions fac­ing the TPP, par­tic­u­lar­ly on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

“But one thing I have to say in re­la­tion to the ques­tion you asked me is, you know, what do we ex­pect from the TPP? They have to bring home the au­ton­o­my ba­con.”

James warned of con­se­quences if that promise is not de­liv­ered.

“If that doesn’t hap­pen, they say that the dogs are go­ing to be very dead. Very dead.”

He said the gov­ern­ing par­ty would al­so still need to re­con­nect with vot­ers.

“But I think they can do it. They’ll have, of course, to go around to the peo­ple again.”