DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come - GLoCaL Knowledge Pot

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The three-way Deadlock in the Chaguanas Borough in the local government election resonate with the undertones of the deadlock in the national elections of 2001.
Does anyone remember those years of deadlock turmoil?

Map of Local Government Elections according to party-based voting

They pointed then, as the localised deadlock in Chaguanas indicate now, the need to more strategicaly rethink our democracy and the directions in which it is heading and the need for bite-the-bullet reform actions that will set the country on a more progressive path to development.

The more things change, they more they remain the same? Is it a sign of things to come? An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just two parties but three, and maybe not unfathomable, deadlock between four or five or six parties?
How unimaginable is that? In a situation where some 50 percent did not vote and whose vote can go anywhere, whether with the existing offerings, or alternatives that may surface, quick fixes, to the deficiencies in our ill-fitted democracy, are clearly not the answer.

Through the Political Glass Ceiling By Dr Kris Rampersad — The Call for Leadership Look Inside Through the Political Glass Ceiling by Dr Kris Rampersad
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Did the textbook writers of proportional representation envisioned a three-way tie, rather than a two fight developing?
Or did it slip through the cracks in the shortsighted lenses with which the so-called political pundits continue to inspect the unfathmoable conundrum that Trinidad and Tobago appears to be, trying to forcefit old and tired theories and ideas into constitutional reform into a world that none of those who sat on previous constitutional reform commissions making recommendations envisioned.
Struggling to find answers to crime which everyone touts as the number one challenge, but which really is – ask any politician since Hyarima – has been managing our diversity.
It is an inkling of the shortsightedness of those driving constitutional reform, mainly through legal and theoretical academic lenses than from the realities of the society itself and the effervescent social dynamics of our multicultural state.
So what is wrong with this map? This picture of an archaic two party state in a two party system belies the realities we all know exists in the communities around us ….

Dalai Lama with members of media in Trinidad Kris Rampersad

See Reform, Perform or Perform, Cross Winds of Political Change The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The Political Glass Ceiling, on the raging winds that blow in political climate change and need for us to look for and devise a system and reconstruct institutions in ways that are relevant to our own realities has been in demand by a growing disenchanted electorate since the 1960s.

The opportunity to harness the best of us, to impact the political climate change sweeping not only or islands but the globe, drawing from the experience of our evolution diversity ….